17.07.19
East Midlands Ambulance Service earns ‘Good’ rating from CQC
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has awarded the East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust a ‘Good’ rating, following an inspection of its service.
CQC carried out its inspection of the trust between 2 April and 15 May, finding that a significant number of improvements had been made. The trust’s previous inspection, back in 2017, had seen a ‘Requires Improvement’ rating being issued.
The trust is now rated ‘Good’ overall, as well as in four of the five key inspection criteria. The trust scored ‘Good’ in safe, effective, responsive and well-led.
It was rated as ‘Outstanding’ in the fifth key question; whether the service is caring.
Chief inspector of hospitals at the CQC, Professor Ted Baker, said: “We found many improvements had been made since our last inspection of East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust and inspectors were impressed with what they saw.
“We found improvements across the service and the trust leadership and trust staff had clearly worked extremely hard to bring about changes to benefit patients across the East Midlands.
“Staff were overwhelmingly caring to patients and others they encountered during their work and the inspection highlighted a number of areas of outstanding practice. In particular with regard to urgent care transport and how the trust was finding new ways of call handling which resulted in improvements in its capacity to deal with major incidents.
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“Our inspection also found there were some improvements the trust needed to make, notably with regard to the effectiveness of its patient transport service. We have given the trust our feedback on where further improvements should be made and will continue to monitor the trust and return to check on its progress.
“Overall, however, the trust leadership and its staff are to be congratulated and should be proud of their work which has resulted in significant improvements for people using its service.”
Inspectors also witnessed outstanding practice across the trust overall, in emergency and urgent care, patient transport services, emergency operations centre and resilience services.