The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has rated East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust as Good following an inspection of its service.
CQC carried out its inspection of the trust between 2 April and 15 May and found that a significant number of improvements had been made. The trust was previously inspected in 2017 following which it was rated Requires Improvement.
The trust is now rated Good overall as well as in four of the five key questions we ask - is the trust safe, effective, responsive and well-led.
It is rated as Outstanding, in the fifth key question, for whether its service is caring.
CQC’s Chief Inspector of Hospitals, Professor Ted Baker, said:
“We found many improvements had been made since our last inspection of East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust and inspectors were impressed with what they saw.
“We found improvements across the service and the trust leadership and trust staff had clearly worked extremely hard to bring about changes to benefit patients across the East Midlands.
“Staff were overwhelmingly caring to patients and others they encountered during their work and the inspection highlighted a number of areas of outstanding practice. In particular with regard to urgent care transport and how the trust was finding new ways of call handling which resulted in improvements in its capacity to deal with major incidents.
“Our inspection also found there were some improvements the trust needed to make, notably with regard to the effectiveness of its patient transport service. We have given the trust our feedback on where further improvements should be made and will continue to monitor the trust and return to check on its progress.
“Overall, however, the trust leadership and its staff are to be congratulated and should be proud of their work which has resulted in significant improvements for people using its service.”
Inspectors also witnessed outstanding practice across the trust overall, in emergency and urgent care, patient transport services, emergency operations centre and resilience services. This included:
- In April 2018 the trust introduced an urgent care transport service. This was designed to reduce delays for patients, and reduce the pressure faced by emergency operations centre staff and ambulance crews. The service had resulted in significant improvements to patient care, ambulance crews had seen their urgent workload reduce – enabling them to respond to higher categories of calls - which better utilised their skills and knowledge. Early patient feedback was also positive and there had been a significant reduction in complaints.
- A project has started in Northampton to create a dementia friendly ambulance including dementia boxes in each vehicle with twiddle muffs or dolls. Crews also turn down the radio, minimise noise in the ambulance and play suitable music.
- The trust was working with GPs in Lincolnshire and Derbyshire on a rotational paramedic scheme funded through Health Education England. The aim was to further develop paramedic skills, provide enhanced career pathways and explore the use of paramedic skills in primary care.The rotating paramedic team from the east coast won a ‘Lincolnshire Health Award’ for their dedication to Health Education England’s rotating paramedic pilot at the Lincolnshire Health Awards.
- In September last year the trust became the first English ambulance trust to start transferring calls digitally to another English ambulance service. They developed the computer aided despatch system to enable it to digitally send calls to, and receive 999 calls from, other ambulance trusts. Prior to the launch of the new technology, when an ambulance trust answered a call for an incident in another area, details were verbally passed on. Transferring calls digitally saved time, improved the patient experience, and provided additional resilience in the event of a major incident. This provided real time information to other ambulance trusts for 999 calls, sped up the process of getting assistance to patients, freeing up emergency medical dispatchers at each site to answer other emergency calls.
There are some areas where CQC has told the trust it should make improvements. This includes:
- The trust should continue to develop actions to drive performance, particularly the timeliness of transport for patients.
- The trust should consider auditing learning from incidents and complaints to ensure learning has been shared widely.
- The trust should ensure staff complete Mental Capacity Act training and mental health awareness training.
Full reports for the trust will be published on CQC’s website today at the following link: www.cqc.org.uk/provider/RX9
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