Region’s ambulance service continues its positive momentum and receives ‘Good’ ratings from Care Quality Commission

Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust has received ‘Good’ ratings for its non-emergency Patient Transport Service (PTS) and Emergency Operations Centre (EOC), following the recent independent Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection of these two areas and was praised for continuing the significant development of its patient services*.

The CQC, as the regulator of health and social care in England, carried out a detailed inspection in these services during May 2019 and concluded that they were ‘Good’ across all categories – Safe, Effective, Caring, Responsive and Well Led - and had shown significant improvement since the last inspection in autumn 2016.

The CQC report published today (14 October 2019) praised staff for their compassion and kindness, dignity and respect, with patients consistently positive in their comments about the care they had received.

It also highlighted that the Trust’s PTS, which makes just under one million patient journeys a year, had successfully addressed the issues raised three years ago. It has now moved from ‘Requires Improvement’ to ‘Good’ and the inspectors found many areas of excellent practice. 

The EOC, which handles around 2,700 emergency calls every day, consolidated its ‘Good’ rating and the inspectors highlighted the service having the quickest 95^th centile call answering performance rate of all 11 NHS ambulance providers from July 2018 to January 2019.

There was also positive feedback about leadership at the Trust via the new Well Led process. 

The report comments very positively on the culture of the organisation and the delivery of high quality patient services, with a clear commitment to continuous improvement across the organisation.

The Trust was cited as engaging proactively with patients, staff, the public and local organisations to plan and manage services in a collaborative way.

Rod Barnes, Chief Executive of Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust, said:

“We are delighted to see the continued advances across the Trust reflected in the latest CQC inspection report. It reflects the hard work and commitment of staff across our PTS, EOC and leadership team. I’m immensely proud of our dedicated staff and the care they provide to patients every day.

“We have a clear strategic direction and are taking forward significant plans to transform our services. Our organisational values ensure that we place patients at the heart of all that we do and our ethos of ‘One Team’ is clearly visible in the report. Whilst we recognise that we still have work to do to achieve the full extent of our vision for the future, I believe that we have the skills and energy in our workforce.

“It’s great to be able to celebrate the recognition of our achievements in PTS and EOC and across all of our services in the regulator’s report and I believe this should add further to the confidence of patients and the public in the consistently high quality care provided by their regional ambulance service.”

ENDS

Notes to Editor: 

* On this occasion the inspection carried out did not include our A&E Operations, Resilience or NHS 111 services.

Extracts from the CQC’s Report on Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust

Patient Transport Service

 “Staff treated patients with compassion and kindness, respected their privacy and dignity, and took account of their individual needs. Patients we spoke with were consistently positive in their comments about the service.”

“A positive culture was evident in patient transport services. The service had an open culture where patients, their families and staff could raise concerns and promoted equality and diversity.”

“There had been significant improvement since our last inspection in relation to services for patients who were undergoing renal dialysis.”

Emergency Operations Centre

“All those responsible for delivering care worked together as a team to benefit patients. They supported each other to provide good care and communicated effectively with other agencies.”

“Staff supported patients to make informed decisions about their care and treatment. They knew how to support patients who lacked capacity to make their own decisions or were experiencing mental ill health.”

Well Led
“The Trust had a clear vision for what it wanted to achieve and workable plans to turn it into action developed with involvement from staff, patients, and key groups representing the local community.”

“There was notable practice in a strong Critical Friends Network (CFN) made up of ex-patients and members of the public.”

“There were processes in place to support staff and to promote well-being. Staff told us they felt appreciated. Staff we spoke with felt empowered to make improvements and raise concerns.”

About Yorkshire Ambulance Service
Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust covers almost 6,000 square miles of varied terrain from isolated moors and dales to urban areas, coastline and inner cities and provides 24-hour emergency and healthcare services to a population of more than five million people in Yorkshire and the Humber. It employs over 5,800 staff and has valuable support from over 1,100 volunteers.

The Trust receives an average of 2,700 emergency and routine calls each day in its emergency operations centres in Wakefield and York. 

The non-emergency Patient Transport Service takes eligible patients to and from their hospital and treatment centre appointments and made just under one million journeys in 2018-19.

The Trust’s NHS 111 urgent medical assistance and advice line helped 1.6 million patients across Yorkshire and the Humber, Bassetlaw, North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire during 2018-19.

About the Care Quality Commission

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and social care in England.

It makes sure health and social care services provide people with safe, effective, compassionate, high-quality care and it encourages care services to improve.

The CQC monitors, inspects and regulates services to make sure they meet fundamental standards of quality and safety and publishes its findings to help people choose care.

Issued by the Yorkshire Ambulance Service Press Office