Astana, 19 October. Over more than three years, 5,261 cases were found in Astana in which a patient left at home by a clinic doctor after an examination needed an ambulance again within 12 hours, each time with a higher urgency category; in 61 cases the patient died before the crew arrived.
The figures come from an audit commission's report on the efficiency of budget spending on emergency care, which BES.media has examined (BES.media, BES.media).
The report was approved on 8 October 2026 and covers the period from 1 January 2023 to 31 March 2026. The auditors compared data from Komek, the automated call management system, with the clinics' official responses and used personal ID numbers and addresses to check who sought help again within 12 hours (BES.media).
All calls to the 103 number are divided into four urgency categories: the first means a direct threat to life, the second a possible threat to life, the third a threat to health and the fourth acute conditions with no immediate threat to life. At certain hours fourth-category calls are passed to mobile teams from outpatient clinics, and after the examination the doctor decides whether the patient can stay at home. Over the period under review, clinics received 379,510 such calls, and in 327,288 cases the patients were left at home (BES.media).
The auditors attribute these cases to possible errors at two stages: when the dispatcher sets the urgency category and when the doctor decides not to hospitalise the patient. They stress, however, that death statistics alone do not prove a link between the medics' actions and the patients' deaths: each case requires a separate clinical review. The audit also found discrepancies between the clinics' reports and Komek data; the auditors did not rule out that some medical organisations may have deliberately understated the number of repeat calls (BES.media, BES.media).
One of the cases described took place on 26 November 2025: a call to a patient with a severe bronchial asthma attack was given the fourth category and sent to clinic No. 14. The doctor found the patient in a critical condition and passed the call to the ambulance service; the category was raised to the first, the crew arrived within five minutes, but the patient had already died, 34 minutes after the first call (BES.media).
Background: Repeat calls and deaths by year: 1,626 and 27 in 2023, 1,099 and 16 in 2024, 1,961 and 13 in 2025, and 575 and five in the first quarter of 2026. The share of repeat calls among patients left at home rose from 1.25% in 2023 to 3.7% in the first quarter of 2026 (BES.media).
List of sources used: BES.media, BES.media
Artificial intelligence was used in preparing this material.
