Issue - meetings

Presentation.

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 an update in respect of the NW Ambulance Service. They had previously given a presentation at the meeting of the Board on 30 April 2013, where it had been 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.

A report had been circulated to Board Members, which provided a description of performance in the area over the previous four years, as well as initiatives to support demand management and performance improvement. As the Board had asked for information on the historic trends in emergency activity and performance, a number of methodological challenges were explained in the report. (A copy of the detailed report has been published on the Council’s website, as a supplementary document to these minutes).

Members of the Board asked a number of questions and raised the following issues :-

• The need to address the impact of the increase of specialist care being provided in North Staffs, rather than Eastern Cheshire. This also needed to be relayed to the public.

·         It was noted that a major public awareness campaign was due to be launched on 30 September in relation to the correct use of ambulances. The need to effectively play into Local Integration Programmes - It was noted that local managers attended Local Integration Programme meetings and it was recognised that the service needed to be adapted to fit local needs.

·         The fact that there is a large population in Eastern Cheshire and a lot more people would be affected if targets were not met should be highlighted.

·         That information regarding relative journeys and cost be included in future reports.

·         The need for an increase in community responders locally, particularly in rural areas – It was noted that it was proposed to look at growing some of the community responder schemes and the provision of community based paramedics. It was also suggested that the Ambulance Service liaise with Healthwatch to see if they could assist with this issue.