More than £3 million is being invested in East Midlands Ambulance Service to help it raise standards.
Bosses at Emas, as the service is known, will take on extra staff and buy more ambulances with the money.
The news came as the Care Quality Commission (CQC) said that when it last inspected Emas, it found the service was failing to meet three of six key standards. It found some patients were waiting too long for treatment, staffing levels were too low and most Emas employees did not feel supported by their boss.
Emas said the extra funding would help it address all of those issues.
In its report, the CQC inspectors said staff at one care home had told them it had taken four hours for an ambulance to arrive.
They added that an Emas employee had told them staff were "at breaking point", and another had said: "If we all worked to the rules the system would fall apart. More staff and more ambulances are needed across the board."
The comments were made when the CQC inspection team spent two days, March 4 and 5, visiting ambulance stations, A&E departments and care homes, and talking to Emas patients and staff.
The ambulance service has been given until tomorrow (May 24) to let inspectors know what action they will take to meet the three standards it failed to reach.
Earlier this week, it emerged that Emas had suffered a £3.5 million penalty in the 2012/13 financial year for failing to meet one of its response time targets.
Although it got to 75 per cent of life-threatening calls within eight minutes as required, it failed to get to 95 per cent of less urgent calls within 19 minutes as required.
Despite the penalty, Emas broke even in 2012/13.
Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) across the East Midlands which pay Emas have agreed to give it an extra £3.4 million this financial year to help it recruit a further 155 staff and buy more vehicles.
A further £3.4million could be available from April 2014, if Emas meets performance standards.
Dr Dave Briggs, of East Leicestershire and Rutland CCG, said: "It is vital that patients receive high quality care as swiftly as possible and clearly there is still work to do to ensure that Emas achieves the response standards required."
He added: "All our patients can be assured that we have acted and invested to significantly uplift performance."
David Farrelly, director of workforce, strategy and transformation at Emas, said a new way of working approved by the Emas board in March "already addresses the three areas which the CQC agree is where action is needed".
He added: "For example, in response to needing more staff, the increase in funds from our commissioners means we are actively recruiting more people to work on our frontline so we have more resource to respond to the calls we receive – this is extra to the 140 announced in March.
"Our new management structure will provide better support for staff, as will the new and more locally based training facilities and response times are already improving because of the changes we are making."
Dr Mike Pepperman, from the Leicester Mercury Patients' Panel, said: "My view is that Emas has recognised areas of concern highlighted by the CQC and has been proactive in looking for solutions to them.
"The restructuring that has started has already resulted in some improvements in these areas and hopefully these improvements will continue."
