Visit to North East Ambulance Service

Daniel Elkeles recently enjoyed a visit North East Ambulance Service (NEAS) to meet their new chief executive Kevin Scollay and see the consistent progress being achieved across the service. 

Daniel said: "There is no doubt that NEAS is doing well consistently achieving the best Category 2 performance in the country. They have used additional national funding to invest in more ambulance capacity and have worked collaboratively with their partners across their region to significantly reduce handover delays at hospitals.

"They are now focused on sustaining this great performance, further improving the quality of their service and working across their system on how the ambulance service can deliver the 'left shift'. For the ambulance sector, that means caring for more patients in their homes or community so that fewer patients need to be taken to hospital to get the care they need. 

"They have implemented a new model for ambulance dispatch which has involved organising their region into three patches - each now with its own dispatch team. They have also implemented a critical care response desk, meaning a specialist paramedic in critical care is in the control centre 24/7 listening in on 999 calls, in order to: 

🔵 Identify the sickest patients and ensuring that the most appropriate response is sent to them.
🔵 Both stepping up and standing down resources sent to patients when it becomes clearer how ill the patient is.
🔵 Accessing GoodSam technology so they can video conference with the crews and patients.

"It was great to see the commitment to improvement and innovation in my visit. 

"Thank you so much to Kevin and team for hosting me."