13 December 2012
During a routine inspection
We visited the head quarters of the service and on arrival; we spoke with a number of senior managers, administration staff and ambulance personnel. The managers informed us at the time of the visit that the company was sold in November 2012 and applications to register the new provider and deregister the existing provider with the Care Quality Commission were in progress.
However, as the applications had not been submitted at the time of our visit the inspection was carried out as planned. Due to the nature and geographical spread of the services provided, we were unable to speak with people using the service. However, we used a number of different methods to help us understand the experiences of people using the service. This included reviewing patient records, patient and staff satisfaction, quality monitoring of the services, staff recruitment and training.
The service recruits a range of trained ambulance personnel as sub contractor's, they included, First Person on Scene (FPOS), Emergency Care Assistants (ECA), Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT) and Registered Paramedics.