North West Ambulance Service Presentation
To receive a presentation from Dave Kitchin and Tim Butcher from the NW Ambulance Service.
Minutes:
Tim Butcher, Assistant Director Service Improvement, and Dave Kitchen, Head of Service Cheshire and Merseyside, for the NW Ambulance Service attended the meeting to provide a presentation in respect of the NW Ambulance Service. Mike Moore, Manager for the Central and East Cheshire Service, was also present.
Mr Butcher explained the Services vision, which was to deliver the right care, at the right time, and in the right place. The Service included the 999 paramedic emergency service, the urgent care patient transport service and major incident management.
The area covered over 5,400 square miles, with a population of seven million and included 5 NHS Local Area Teams with 33 Clinical Commissioning Groups and 38 NHS Provider Trusts. 5000 staff were employed in the service, which had an annual income of £260 million. There were three emergency control centres and the service dealt with 1.1 million 999 calls a year (900 000 emergency patient transport episodes) with 1.1 million planned Patient Transport Service journeys.
Current priorities included managing increased 999 demand, reducing A&E attendance through alternative pathways, improving turnaround at hospitals, the new PTS contract, managing public expectations, achieving Foundation Trust status, system integration and Estates Strategy.
Mr Kitchen outlined the performance standards for 999 calls. All calls were prioritised to determine appropriate level of response. 75% of red calls (immediately life threatening, e.g. cardiac arrests, breathing difficulties, strokes) were responded to within 8 minutes and 95% within 19 minutes.
Details of Ambulance provision in East Cheshire, current local NWAS initiatives and current performance for red calls for 2012/13 were also outlined.
It was noted that the service had a number of health and wellbeing initiatives, including frequent caller identification, falls prevention, accident prevention, chain of survival, public safety campaigns and public education programmes. The service would be happy to work with other agencies and to attend and report to future meetings of the Board, as required.
Following the presentation members of the Board asked a number of questions and requested additional information with regard to what the service was doing in order to improve performance levels, including an action plan.
It was resolved:-
That the NW Ambulance Service be requested to produce a report for consideration at a future meeting of the Health and Wellbeing Board, in respect of the historic position in relation to the service, improvements made to date and how it was proposed to make future improvements to the Service, including an action plan.