WYMRT Registered Office

West Yorkshire Medical Response Team is operated by West Yorkshire Medical Response Team . The service is a charity and provides a specialist team of pre-hospital doctors and paramedics to the Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust to respond to emergency calls for the purpose of supporting life, preventing deterioration and promoting recovery prior to arrival at a hospital emergency department.

We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out the announced part of the inspection on 5 March 2018.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we ask the same five questions of all services: are they safe, effective, caring, responsive to people's needs, and well-led?

Throughout the inspection, we took account of what people told us and how the provider understood and complied with the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

The main service provided by this service was urgent and emergency care.

Services we do not rate

We regulate independent ambulance services but we do not currently have a legal duty to rate them. We highlight good practice and issues that service providers need to improve and take regulatory action as necessary.

We found the following areas of good practice:

• There was an open culture in which all practices were reviewed and effective processes were in place to report, record and share learning from incidents.
• Staff were clear in their responsibilities to safeguard children and adults from abuse.
• The service had effective processes in place to protect patients from healthcare associated infections. The vehicle and equipment had been regularly maintained and serviced.
• The continuing development of staff skills, competence and knowledge was recognised as being integral to ensuring high quality care.
• The service was committed to working collaboratively with the NHS ambulance trust and local hospitals to deliver joined-up, up to date evidence based care to patients.
• There was a comprehensive assurance system and audit process in place, which enabled staff to monitor performance and take actions to improve performance and patient safety as necessary.
• Staff showed a passion, commitment and drive to deliver the best possible care to patients. They offered their services voluntarily to provide this additional service for patients. There was high levels of staff satisfaction, staff were proud to volunteer their services.
• The leaders were credible, experienced, knowledgeable and demonstrated enthusiasm in their roles to both improve the care of patients and to increase the knowledge and skills for those who worked in the service.

However, we also found the following issues that the service provider needs to improve;

• The batch numbers on the medicines administered were not always documented on the patient report forms.
• Paramedics had not received an annual appraisal.

Following this inspection, we told the provider that it should make other improvements, even though a regulation had not been breached, to help the service improve. Details of these are at the end of the report.

Ellen Armistead

Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals, on behalf of the Chief Inspector of Hospitals