East of England Ambulance Service

The East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust (EEAST)  provides ambulance services in the counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, in the East of England. The service is free, which means people who are hurt do not have to pay money to be driven to a hospital. Under the Patient's Charter every person in the United Kingdom is allowed to use an ambulance if there is an emergency.

The East England Ambulance Service do not only drive people to hospitals, they also help heal people who are injured and are too far from a hospital.

History
The trust was formed on 1 July 2006, when three ambulance services came together. They were the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Ambulance and Paramedic Service NHS Trust, the East Anglian Ambulance NHS Trust, and the Essex Ambulance Service NHS Trust. The result was an ambulance service covering an area of over  with a population of 5.8 million people, and one which answers over 500,000 emergency calls every year.East of England Ambulance Service

In 2009, the Trust got in trouble by the Care Quality Commission because the ambulances were dirty and the employees did not know how to handle many medical procedures.

Statistics and resources
In 2009 and 2010, the company went to 668,451 emergency calls, including 207,626 high-priority "category A" emergencies. It arrived at 75.67% of these "category A" calls within eight minutes, and 96.04% within 19 minutes.

The company has the following vehicles and stations in operation:

 273 emergency ambulances
 237 ambulances not for emergencies
 215 marked fast-response cars
 25 big incident support vehicles; cleanup equipment, and mobile control rooms
 110 ambulance stations and response posts
 3 Health Emergency Operations Centers (control rooms) in Bedford, Chelmsford and Norwich

The company has a driving school. This school has trained more than 220 employees in emergency driving.

3,994 people work at the ambulance company.

Related pages
 Emergency medical services in the United Kingdom

References

Other websites
 East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust

Category:2006 establishments in England
Category:NHS ambulance services trusts