Ambulances ‘weak’ after call-outs error

8:40am Sunday 26th October 2008

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Ambulance bosses submitted incorrect figures to the Government’s health watchdog, resulting in a weak rating in its annual report.

The East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust received the lowest score in the Healthcare Comm-ission’s annual health check, published last Thursday.

It was given a mandatory weak rating for quality of services, which rates safety of patients, cleanliness and waiting times, because response times were logged wrongly in a control centre in Norwich.

In the ‘use of resources’ category, it also received a weak rating. This looks at how well the organisation manages finances.

Scores for both assessments include weak, fair, good and excellent and the review covers the period of April last year to March this year.

The trust performed badly compared to last year’s scores of good for quality of services and fair for use of resources.

Chief executive Hayden Newton said the scores, while disappointing, did not reflect on the quality of care provided by staff across the region.

He said: “Our quality of services score results solely from errors in the response performance data submitted to the Healthcare Commission.

“We discovered that on a small number of occasions on-scene times for community first responders and healthcare professionals other than ambulance service staff were logged incorrectly in our Norwich control centre.

“Because of these errors, our data was classified as not returned, and we received a mandatory weak rating for quality of services. I would like to thank all of our staff for their continued commitment to providing the best possible service to patients.”

A spokesman said an investigation was ongoing into the mistake in Norwich. “At present we can not say anything further,” he said.

Calls for the Borehamwood area are answered at another centre, in Bedford.

In April the trust was faced with the Government’s new target of reaching 75 per cent of potentially life-threatening calls within eight minutes from the moment the caller is connected to the control centre.

Since then the response to such calls has improved by an average of 60 seconds. During September, the Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire area’s ambulance responses reached 81 per cent of potentially life-threatening incidents within eight minutes.

This figure was an improvement on 70 per cent last year.

The trust has an action plan to ensure improvements in financial control and plans to recruit 200 student paramedics before March 2009.