Ambulance trust has made improvements
Great Western Ambulance Service NHS Trust has made improvements to services following a tragic death last year, explained the Healthcare Commission.
The incident, which took place in May 2007, ended in a death of a woman who was involved in a road traffic accident. The ambulance took 42 minutes to attend the scene at Cirencester in Gloucestershire – 34 minutes over the national target of eight minutes for attending an accident of this kind.
The Commission was also concerned that the trust had not been meeting national targets on emergency response times.
Therefore they reviewed both the management arrangements that were in place at the time of the accident and subsequent changes made by the trust.
The Commission said the trust has responded to concerns and made improvements to its service. It said changes such as the introduction of a new ambulance dispatch system, a centralised control room system and a review of its vehicle fleet have contributed to reducing the risk of this incident recurring.
Since the tragic incident, the trust has improved its dispatch systems by ways such as merging three call handling systems into one central system based in Bristol, the introduction of 'Drive Zones' where vehicles have an identified geographical patch to work within, and the introduction of a new automated dispatch system from September, enabling vehicles to be dispatched before the phone call is finished.
The Commission urges the trust to continue driving down response times. Currently the trust is responding to immediately life threatening incidents within eight minutes for 72.2% of such calls. The national target is to accomplish this for 75% of calls of this nature.
The trust should set up a programme of regular workshops and team meetings which are open to control room and operational staff across the organisation to discuss performance issues and any lessons which can be learned, the Commission recommended.
The Commission will re-visit the trust in six months to check progress against these recommendations.
Great Western Ambulance Service was formed in April 2006 by the merger of three county trusts,
Weblink:
www.healthcarecommission.org.uk
Words: Maria Bracken
