NHS Wales avoided tens of thousands of hospital admissions through an innovative clinical triaging team, Welsh health minister, Eluned Morgan has revealed.
The Welsh Ambulance Service Trust’s (WAST) integrated care team comprises 83 clinicians, with paramedics, nurses and mental health professionals all featuring.
The staff on the integrated care team review waiting 999 patients and identify if other methods, rather than a visit to hospital, could be suitable.
In 2023, the team was involved in nearly 97,000 calls, which is around 25% of all 999 activity for the year.
Of those calls, more than 39,000 were managed with just telephone advice thus averting patients presenting at hospitals and reducing pressure on emergency departments.
On a visit to WAST, Eluned Morgan said: “The introduction of the Integrated Care Team, supported by Welsh Government funding, has improved efficiency and reduced pressure on the ambulance service and emergency departments.”
“This is particularly important at this time of year when pressure on the NHS is most severe.”
Morgan continued: “The team has also transformed the quality of care delivered to people in the community by providing them with earlier clinical intervention at scene, and helping to reserve ambulance response capacity for those most in need.”
The WAST service manager for the integrated care team, Penny Durrant, added: “We are really proud of this team, which is signposting patients to the most appropriate services, enabling patients to remain in their own homes and freeing up ambulances to respond to other urgent calls in the community.
“These are the paramedics and nurses who traditionally have helped patients face-to-face, but who are now applying their skills in a different way by triaging patients over the phone. At a time when pressures are more prevalent than ever, this is WAST’s way of thinking differently about the way it delivers services.”
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