Foreword and statement on quality from the Board
Foreword and statement on quality from the Board
Patient care is at the core of what we do here at the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust (EEAST). We provide help and support in the most difficult and challenging situations for our patients and communities and we are committed to delivering safe, high quality, care for all who need our services.
The past year has been challenging for EEAST and ambulance services across England, with the impact of increased demand and handover delays at hospitals across our region. This has regrettably resulted in longer response times than we would like which has inevitably affected our ability to provide the standard of care we aspire to and we apologise to those affected by this. However, throughout these challenges our people and partners have worked together to do the very best for our communities.
We are responding to these demands in a number of ways to improve the care we can provide to our community. Over the past year this has included:
- The implementation of ‘Access to Stack’ in November 2022, allowing our Emergency Clinical Advice and Treatment Centre (ECAT) to pass appropriate calls to alternative care providers following appropriate triage. These calls can be for falls, social care or as deemed appropriate by a clinician. This helps us get the right support to patients in the community and frees up ambulance resources for those who urgently need them.
- Continuing to grow our fire service co-responding service, enabling us to provide rapid response to communities for cardiac arrests, falls and multidisciplinary support.
- Recruiting hundreds of new staff into our Emergency Operations Centres (EOCs) which has improved our ability to answer calls in a timely way and improve the way we dispatch our resources and expand the number of patients who benefit from clinical triage.
- Continuing to focus on improving welfare support to our people so they are supported to provide the best possible care to our patients, this has included the roll out of six welfare wagons, alongside extended physical and mental health support.
Another highlight is the continuing clinical practice and delivery by the amazing staff and volunteers in EEAST, making us one of the highest performing Trusts for falls, stroke and ST Elevation Myocardial Infarction (STEMI) patients, and for post-Return of Spontaneous Circulation (ROSC) care bundles. This effectively ensures that some of our most acutely unwell patients are receiving the best possible care. Furthering our clinical and technological abilities, we have launched our stroke video triage applications, electronic patient care records and upgraded telephony systems, all improving our ability to respond to our patients.
In terms of regulation, we saw positive progress from our last Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection in April 2022, whilst recognising that there is still much more to do. We continue to make good progress against the actions set out from CQC inspections and at the time of writing this report CQC has lifted two conditions against our registration, and we are working towards the closure of a further 6 conditions.
Following the legal enforcement action issued to the Trust in April 2021 by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), the Trust worked with regulatory bodies to ensure the Trust has delivered on the action plan to address concerns raised and to strengthen our policies for handling cases of harassment and abuse. This has therefore led to the conclusion of formal monitoring and the legal agreement with the EHRC.
However, we recognise there is still much more to do to improve our culture, in March we saw the publication of the black and minority ethnic (BME) survey, the results of which made for difficult reading. The board has set out the actions it intends to take to improve the working environment for all our people and to eradicate poor behaviour across the organisation. Culture change takes time, and the board is committed to delivering this over the coming years.
Much has been achieved in the last 12 months during what has been an extremely challenging year for the whole of the wider health environment but we recognise that much more is required as we focus on our improvement, which we are committed to do.
Tom Abell
Chief Executive Officer
Next page: Introducing the EEAST Quality Account 2022-23