Issue - meetings

To receive a presentation from the North West Ambulance Trust on various matters including:

      The Foundation Trust application;

      Update on Community First Responders and Co-responders Scheme;

      Response times.

The Vice Chairman welcomed the following representatives of the North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) to the meeting:

      Paul Ferguson, Deputy Director of Service Development

      Carol Hall, Assistant Director Foundation Trust Delivery

      Sarah Smith, Assistant Director Corporate Communications.

The representatives briefed the Committee on various current issues that related to the Ambulance Trust:

Taking Healthcare to the Patient – this was a Department of Health initiative to transform ambulance services.  There were a number of strands:

      Call Connect – this was designed to improve the speed of responses and NWAS had invested in Emergency Control Centres, increased staffing levels especially call handling staff, improved technology and increased the levels of front-line operational resources.  There was now a performance target for Emergency Response times that was measured from the time that the 999 call was connected.  The target was that 95% of calls were answered within 5 seconds, NWAS reported that more patients were receiving a response within target;

      Hear and Treat – this had led to increased use of paramedic assessment for minor calls within Emergency Control Centres, an Advanced Paramedic Role had been developed, an alternative call categorisation and prioritisation system had been developed (NHS Pathways), a Regional Operational Control Centre had been established to oversee operations such as monitoring activity levels and service pressures and a new Operational Support Control Centre had been introduced in Carlisle;

      See and Treat – a Clinical leadership programme had begun and higher education programmes introduced for existing and future paramedics; 42 new Advanced Paramedics had been recruited, Care Pathways had been improved for Heart Attack and Stroke patients in line with clinical networks and a capacity management/health control system had been developed in partnership with Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) to assist in directing patients to appropriate care.

P Ferguson then briefed on performance in relation to Central and Eastern Cheshire PCT.  He explained that NWAS had shown consistent Category A8 and A19 performance despite a continuous increase in 999 call volume.  This had been due to the introduction of Call Connect.  The overall Category A performance for the PCT was 66.5% with the overall NWAS performance being 74.8%.  A Performance Improvement Plan had been developed in conjunction with the PCT and a number of challenges identified including growth in activity and hospital turnaround times.

S Smith briefed on the unannounced inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in July of the NWAS infection control procedures.  The CQC had issued NWAS with a warning notice on cleanliness followed by an inspection report outlining specific areas where the Trust had to make improvements.  A number of measures had been put in place including identifying Infection Control Champions (from among existing staff), the recruitment of a Specialist Paramedic of Infection Control and £100,000 investment into deep cleaning of vehicles.  A number of actions were planned including an audit of vehicles for cleanliness, a deep clean of all vehicles by end of September 2009, an increased and regular programme of deep cleaning of ambulances  ...  view the full minutes text for item 18