By Madeleine Brindley
The Western Mail
CARDIFF, Wales — Ambitious plans to transform the focus of the Welsh Ambulance Service from transporting patients to treating them have been unveiled.
The service has pledged to improve response times over the course of the next five years — indicating stroke patients can expect a four-minute response to a 999 call.
An extra telephone number could be introduced for patients with non-life-threatening conditions.
And the service’s five-year plan states more patients will be treated over the phone or at the scene, rather than be conveyed to hospital.
The plans come after the Welsh Ambulance Service received an additional pounds 5m of Assembly Government money to replace ageing vehicles. And it follows a sustained improvement in performance — the latest figures show ambulances exceeded the target of reaching 65% of life-or-death 999 calls within eight minutes in November, the 10th month running. The service’s five-year plan, Working Together for Success, is based on achieving three priorities — national targets and standards; providing the right service with the right care, in the right place, at the right time with the right skills; and providing “high quality planned patient care services, which are valued by users”.
The plan states: “Although we are all very proud of the services we provide currently, it is recognised that there is always room for improvement in patient care, quality and outcomes.”
Among some of the main changes patients can expect are to be treated over the phone and at the scene or accident site, rather than be automatically taken to hospital.
The Welsh Ambulance Service has already introduced specialist practitioners — dubbed super-paramedics — who have undergone additional training to enable them to treat patients and make decisions about follow-up care.
Bryn Thomas, a specialist practitioner who covers north Gwynedd and Anglesey, said: “Currently the only care option available to an ambulance crew is the A&E unit.
“The new role as a specialist practitioner will be to provide healthcare as well as respond to emergencies. This will help alleviate pressure currently on the ambulances and A&E units.”
The plan adds: “We aim to deliver the best service we can 24 hours a day, seven days a week and deal with patients who have illnesses ranging from immediately life-threatening to a minor injury.
“We work hard to ensure that all calls are answered quickly, the clinical need of the caller is correctly identified and the right advice and care is provided by our staff.
“We are now able to provide a far greater range of care for patients in their homes or at the scene of their accident.”
A key part of the five-year plan is to stop patients attending A&E unnecessarily and to reduce the number of patients who are admitted to hospital.
And explaining how services will change in a series of scenarios, the plan includes the idea of setting up a phone number for non life-threatening cases.
The plan added: “We believe that this description of 2015 is exciting, compelling, better for patients and within our grasp. Importantly, it will benefit patients and our staff.”
A paper to today’s Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust board meeting said the costs of transforming the service are not fully known at present. But it added: “It is clear that the delivery of the improvements identified must be achieved from within allocated resources.
This will require a real focus on improving the quality of services to reduce waste, harm and variation. This should reduce the cost of delivery.”
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