Health Care Professionals’ Area
Important Information for Health Care Professionals who Request Emergency Ambulances
Ambulance trusts across England are introducing a national framework for General Practitioners and other Health Care Professionals (HCPs) who request an ambulance for patients who need urgent or emergency transportation to hospital or between hospital sites.
The aim of this framework is to ensure:
- equity of access for all seriously ill and injured patients;
- recognition that in certain situations, a HCP may require immediate clinical assistance to make a life-saving intervention, in addition to ambulance transportation;
- consistent definitions for high acuity HCP responses are established and mapped to the equivalent emergency 999 response priorities (Categories 1 and 2);
- opportunity for local innovation and acknowledgement of different contractual and commissioning arrangements for lower acuity incidents;
- activity and response to HCP incidents can be measured and reported separately to other 999 activity in order to demonstrate parity of response.
At Yorkshire Ambulance Service these changes are being introduced from Wednesday 9 October 2019 across the region and there are a number of resources for GPs and HCPs.
The materials have been produced in partnership with NHS England and include:
- Stakeholder bulletin – overview of what is happening
- NHS booking checklist (may be useful for GP surgeries etc.)
- NHS National Early Warning Score (NEWS) – explanation document
- Health Care Professional (HCP) poster
- Health Care Professional (HCP) leaflet - for printing
- Health Care Professional (HCP) leaflet - for professional printing
- Inter-Facility Transfer (IFT) poster
- Three presentations
Please direct any queries to yas.eochcpift@nhs.net
