AMBULANCE crews in Scotland are being called to assist ­thousands more patients who have fallen over at home.

In one year, the number of calls to people who have stumbled - most of them frail pensioners - increased by more than 7%.

The problem is adding pressure on the service, which is struggling to meet response time targets. The Scottish Ambulance Service narrowly missed its goal to reach three-quarters of life-threatening emergencies within eight minutes and arrived at 87.6% of urgent GP calls within an hour, against a goal of 91%.

However, the average response time to life-threatening emergencies is now faster than ever, at 6.5 minutes.

Pauline Howie, chief executive of the service, said: "We are getting busier every year in the accident and emergency service and that business mainly happens in the out of hours period.

"That is when people need to call us most.

"We have decided to re-align those shifts so we have more people working in the out of hours periods."

Details about the performance of the Scottish Ambulance Service were discussed at its annual public review in Glasgow yesterday. Beforehand, Casey McLean, three, from Colston, who was taken to hospital after she collapsed from a respiratory arrest last month, met up with the crew who saved her life.

The paramedic response team reached Casey in five minutes and took five minutes to transfer her to the Royal Hospital for Sick Children at Yorkhill while delivering intensive treatment.

Public health minister Michael Matheson, who conducted the review, said: "The McLean family provide an example of how crucial a role our ambulance service play and demonstrate how the staff are saving lives every day of the year."

However, the review was presented with documents which showed most of the ambulance service's key targets are being missed. Nearly 92% of serious incidents are reached by a vehicle in the target time of 19 minutes, against a goal of 95%.

David Garbutt, chairman of the service, pointed out there was a 1.5% increase in emergency demand last year, with crews attending around 600,000 incidents across the country.

The number of calls relating to falls in homes and care homes rose from 31,369 in 2011-12 to 33,604 in 2012-13, an increase of 7.1%.

Ms Howie said this was due to the growing elderly population, with the calls coming in from care homes and community alarm schemes.

Research shows 30% of the over-65s will suffer a fall at some point, rising to 50% of those over the age of 80.

Teams of experts to respond when the frail fall and need help have been developed in parts of Scotland to prevent patients from being taken into hospital and more effort is being made to prevent falls by ensuring equipment is available for those who are unsteady.

Mr Garbutt said: "We are responding faster than ever before to very serious incidents, despite the continued increase in demand for ambulances.

"Ambulance crews used their clinical skills to save the lives of 523 patients in cardiac arrest and the average response time for these cases was six minutes.

"Emergency teams answered over 850,000 calls and responded to more than 600,000 incidents across the country."

The Herald has been calling for a review of capacity both in hospitals and community care services to ensure Scotland can cope with the growing number of elderly people as part of our NHS Time for Action series.