Ambulance Trust of the Year

Over the past five years the number of ambulance 999 calls has gone up by a third, placing more pressure on ambulances and control room operations.  This award is presented to the Ambulance Trust that has embraced change and demonstrated an increase in response times, the ability to provide treatment at the scene of an accident, and the provision of outpatient services.

2009 WINNER: London Ambulance Service

In 2008/09 the London Ambulance Service responded to almost 974,000 incidents, an increase of nearly three per cent on the previous year, of which nearly 320,000 were Category A calls – where patients are assessed as being in an immediately life-threatening condition. The LAS aims to reach category-A emergency calls within eight minutes of the call being received by the control centre. With certain areas of London being very congested, this isn’t always possible.

LAS was the first ambulance service to successfully implement two-way paging for community volunteers, who are trained to attend certain life-threatening calls, including chest pain/cardiac arrest in their own community. The pagers are GPS-enabled so that the control room can quickly ascertain where the nearest community responder is. The two-way feature means that the message recipient can choose a suitable message from a pre-defined list and quickly respond with details of their availability. The pagers use an exclusive network, ensuring that communication is maintained when mobile phone networks may be stretched. London Ambulance is looking to extend the roll-out of two way paging into other voluntary organisations, such as St John Ambulance.

As well as emergency calls, the LAS has implemented a number of initiatives to ensure that Category C patients receive the best possible care. In May this year, the Trust reported that Londoners with non-urgent medical conditions who have phoned for an ambulance or have been treated by ambulance staff are 'very satisfied' with the level of care they received. In a survey carried out by the Care Quality Commission, 99 per cent  of respondents had trust and confidence in the staff who attended them, and 97 per cent said that they had received a good, very good or excellent level of care.   

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