North West Ambulance Service — House of Commons, 2018-01-22
Topic: Health
Stephen Paul Barclay (Conservative, Centre-right): I take that concern seriously, and I discussed it with officials earlier today. Compared with 2010-11, when the local "Healthy Futures" reconfiguration took place, there has been a 33% increase in vehicle hours assigned to the Rochdale and Bury area, with an associated staff resource increase of 43 full-time equivalent. So there has been improvement The North West Ambulance Service also aims to include a paramedic on board every ambulance. Although there are seven paramedic vacancies in the Rochdale area, nine paramedics are due to be assigned over the next 10 weeks and the trust is confident that the area will have a full complement of paramedic staff by April this year. I hope that that brings some comfort to the hon. Gentleman’s constituents about the direction of travel It is worth bearing in mind that, alongside those paramedics, the North West Ambulance Trust has recruited 24 graduates to operate as emergency medical technicians, and they are awaiting registration as paramedics. That will further improve the position. The trust has made it easier for emergency medical technicians to embark on paramedic training courses and worked with local universities to increase the rate of paramedic qualification. Where emergency medical technicians crew ambulances and respond to calls, they are heavily supported to do so safely, with direct access to advice from advanced paramedics and the trust’s clinical hub Handover delays were mentioned in several interventions. We recognise the challenge of delayed patient handovers to emergency departments. Delayed handovers tie up ambulance resources and adversely affect the trust’s capability to respond quickly to new calls. We are clear that handovers must take place within the agreed timeframes, and NHS England and NHS Improvement are supporting hospitals to ensure that improvements are made. Such work includes improved monitoring and daily review by national and regional winter operations teams, targeted assistance to challenged hospital trusts to improve their performance and the issuing of revised handover guidelines that focus responsibility on the wider system to address handover delays, including a clear escalation process. Locally, there are initiatives in place such as the placement of hospital ambulance liaison officers within emergency departments The trust is implementing a number of procedural solutions to improve the efficiency of the call-taking staff, including the use of post-dispatch scripts, which inform callers of the expected arrival time of a resource. In other trusts, that has minimised duplicate calls and reduced ambulance attendances by 4.6% To conclude on the comments of the hon. Member for Rochdale—with the leave of the House, I will then address the concerns of the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb)—his concerns about performance are pertinent, and there is work ongoing to address that issue as part of the wider initiative. However, it is also important to recognise the progress that has been made, which has seen the recruitment of additional paramedics and the training of staff, with the progression of which the hon. Gentleman spoke, which allows people to progress their career into the role of paramedics. There are also further measures in terms of prioritisation, which will address a number of the concerns he set out On whistleblowers, that is an issue on which I, as a constituency Member of Parliament, have long campaigned. I hope my record on that speaks for itself, and the issue is something the right hon. Gentleman and I have previously discussed The right hon. Gentleman has also raised concerns, as has the hon. Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis), regarding the East of England Ambulance Service. On receipt of the right hon. Gentleman’s letter, I instructed officials in my Department to share copies with the Care Quality Commission—the independent regulator of all health and social care services in England—to ensure that it is fully aware of the issues being raised. I discussed these concerning allegations directly with the chief executive of NHS England and the chief executive of NHS Improvement this morning, and asked them to confirm to me the actions they will be taking. They have subsequently confirmed that they will be holding a joint risk summit regarding the trust in the next week. The CQC will be in attendance.