How regional telephony is improving response to patients

Last year we saw a significant change in our control rooms with the implementation of regional telephony and whilst this has been a big adjustment for all of our EOC staff, the change has led to a big improvement in our service to patients.

Combined with new staff recruited to all three EOCs, regional telephony has meant we are now performing at a much higher level:

• patients / callers are no longer waiting two minutes before they are being transferred to another control room to be answered
• dispatch are aware of what the problem with the patient is faster rather than waiting for an “emergency call in progress” to be answered, enabling us  to resource calls more appropriately
• for the past four months we have been in the top two ambulance services due to the low number of calls waiting no longer than two minutes to be answered
• we have seen over 25 patients in cardiac arrest transferred to another EOC within seconds enabling lifesaving advice to be given quickly.

Chief Executive Anthony Marsh said: “Well done and thank you to all of our EOC staff for these excellent achievements and the IT department who implemented the technology. This is real evidence of how we are improving as an ambulance service and is happening at the very first point of contact with our patients, which I am extremely pleased with.”

We are also often the best performing ambulance service in relation to the five-second call answering standard nationally.

Published 16th April 2015