Update from Anthony Marsh - 9th April

Firstly, I would like to thank everyone who worked or volunteered over the busy bank holiday weekend; we saw a 10% increase in calls compared to last Easter, with more than 11,000 received between Good Friday and Easter Monday. We had some extremely challenging jobs and I have passed on my appreciation to a number of crews for the exceptional levels of patient care they gave. I would also like to say a particular thank you to our community first responders, who attended 384 patients over the weekend, which is another excellent display of dedication to patient care.

Now that the 2014/15 financial year has ended, we have had time to review our performance figures and I wanted to share them with you so you can see how far we’ve come as an organisation:

Quarter 1 – Apr to Jun 2014	Red 1	Red 2	A19
Beds and Herts	68.07%	65.2%	94.05%
Essex	68.08%	60.07%	91.33%
NSC	65.32%	58.78%	87.56%
Quarter 4 – Jan to Mar 2015
Beds and Herts	81.27%	73.78%	96.22%
Essex	74.37%	63.70%	93.17%
NSC	71.52%	63.31%	91.07%

 

We do have some work to do, but by the end of the year we were getting to our patients most in need quicker, and I am very proud of what you have done to get us into this position. To have made such an improvement in a time of consistently increasing demand is a huge achievement. Staff in Bedfordshire and north Cambridgeshire in particular have done extremely well in meeting their targets and in some cases, well exceeding them.

Of course performance isn’t the complete picture and the quality of the clinical care we give is equally important. We place as much regard on our ambulance clinical quality indicator results as our performance and this is always reflected by the discussion they generate both at Board meetings and at executive meetings.  We are currently working on our clinical priorities for next year and I will be discussing these in my weekly update very soon.

We are moving in the right direction and I am very pleased with the progress we have made and continue to make. Well done to you all; EEAST is becoming an organisation to be proud of again and you have all played your part in making this happen.

Published 9th April 2015