To receive an updated presentation on the progress of the Make Ready Ambulance system and the work of the West Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust.

The Committee received a presentation from Mr Peter Murtagh, Commissioning Director, West Midlands Ambulance Service, on the performance of the service of the previous six months.

During his presentation, Mr Murtagh highlighted the following areas:

•        The definition of Make Ready Ambulance services as ‘a quality assurance vehicle and equipment preparation programme designed to improve efficiencies across the whole spectrum of Ambulance Operations’.  It was necessary to undertake this change as the present estate was not fit for purpose and the result was that there was a greater coverage across the whole of the West Midlands.

•        Performance of the service since the introduction of Make Ready had improved and Herefordshire’s Red 8 minute performance since the introduction of Make Ready had been consistently high, at 78.8% with an increase in activity of 24% over the previous year.   Despite this increase, shift overruns had reduced by 4.5% in the first quarter of the year.

•        Infection prevention and control had been improved by the Make Ready system.

•        That Foundation Trust authorisation for the Trust had reached the final stages of the assurance process and it was expected that MONITOR would authorise Foundation status by the 1 December.

In reply to a question, Mr Murtagh said that the spike in activity in August was a mixture of the good weather in that month and calls that would have been more appropriately handled by primary care providers. The heightened levels of calls were continuing into September.   Emergency calls had grown by 5% annually, but many could be better handled by primary care providers such as GPs. Ambulance turnarounds at the hospital were an average of 26 minutes, although there were delays at peak times.  Work was in hand to reduce the longest turnaround times with the aim to ensure that there were no handovers longer than thirty minutes. 

Mr Murtagh replied to a Member by saying that the 111 number would come into effect from April 2013, and non-emergency calls should be encouraged to use this instead of the 999 number.  There was an attempt to identify callers to the 999 number at the moment, and there were a number of inappropriate calls from organisations such as Care Homes.  Work was in hand to provide them with a decision tree to work through before they called an ambulance.

In reply to a further question, Mr Murtagh said that whilst there would never be 100% of paramedics employed on ambulances, the Service would reach its target of 70% by 2014.   There was a 30 week training course at the University of Worcester for paramedics and community paramedics, who were trained to higher level.  The intention was to have one paramedic on every vehicle.  A proportion of staff would remain at Technician level.

In reply to questions over ambulance stations, Mr Murtagh said that the key for the Service was to have frontline staff out in the community, and this was more effectively achieved by using the Make Ready system.  There was a community paramedic available in Ross-on-Wye, for example, on a twenty four hour basis, seven days a week.  It was noted that access to services would be looked at by a Task and Finish Group later in the year.