A recent inspection by the independent Care Quality Commission (CQC) found Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust received ‘Good’ ratings for its non-emergency Patient Transport Service (PTS) and Emergency Operations Centre (EOC).
The CQC inspection praised these two areas and for continuing the significant development of its patient services*. As the regulator of health and social care in England, the CQC 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 95th 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.”
*On this occasion the inspection carried out did not include our A&E Operations, Resilience or NHS 111 services.
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Story issued by the Yorkshire Ambulance Service Press Office