Section Four - Be excellent collaborators and innovators as system partners
Section 4 - Be Excellent Collaborators and Innovators as System Partners
Partnership working with the Fire Service
The East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust Charitable Funds
We understand the importance of EEAST working collaboratively across our region to deliver quality patient care. Consequently, over the past year we have worked very closely with local acute, primary and secondary care services, community health, mental health and social care partners and with the voluntary sector.
We have been involved with a number of projects, trials and initiatives across the region.
Advanced Paramedics within Care Homes - In west Hertfordshire an advanced paramedic responds to calls within care homes. This scheme ensures EEAST meet the health and social care needs for the people of west Hertfordshire and sustain approved quality standards and meet the increasing acuity of patients’ needs.
Mental Health Street Triage - A collaborative service between mental health professionals, paramedics and police officers. The mental health street triage team work together to ensure that the most appropriate outcome is achieved for people experiencing mental health crisis. Achieved by assessing the individual and offering professional advice on the spot, accessing relevant health information, and liaising with other services to identify the most appropriate pathway to best support the individual.
Essex Blue Light Collaboration - We successfully piloted an innovative new tri-service rural community officer in the Dengie Peninsula. The officer represents all three emergency services and is a visible and engaging presence in that community, focusing on a prevention agenda that benefits all three services.
The Mental Health Joint Response Vehicle - Initially piloted in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough has become a business as usual scheme. This scheme was delivered in partnership with Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Foundation NHS Trust. The vehicle, a fully equipped blue light rapid response vehicle, is staffed with a mental health practitioner and a paramedic. The scheme responds to 999 emergency calls from patients, health care professionals and the police where they are already in attendance at an incident, available seven days a week.
Early Intervention Vehicles - EEAST worked with our system partners in various locations around the region to deliver collaborative, innovative care and assessment in the patient’s home. Our early Intervention schemes incorporate a variety of professionals, such as occupational therapists and physiotherapists, working alongside clinicians from EEAST. These teams can provide professional clinical/occupational assessment, advice, care planning and referral to other services.
Emergency Department Avoidance - We are working with commissioning and system partners to open up pathways to EEAST to avoid taking patients to emergency departments. This has included lots of joint working with the urgent community response team, exploring access to a consultant in frailty and going live with direct access to each of the three hospital sites came day emergency care hot clinics.
Regional Blue Light Collaboration - We have been working on expanding the emergency medical response models initially piloted in Bedfordshire across the whole of the region, working with regional fire chiefs. Phase one will be cardiac arrest only response on a mutual aid basis as we continue to recover from the impacts of COVID-19. Thereafter, full C1 (an immediate response to life threatening condition, such as cardiac or respiratory arrest) and other categories of response will be considered.
The ‘silver frailty line’ - A new pathway designed to speed up and improve the care that frail and elderly people receive has been put into place by EEAST and Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. This allows ambulance crews to speak to frailty nurse practitioners and consultants at the hospital to get expert advice so that residents can be treated in their own home or taken straight to a specialist ward, often bypassing the emergency department. Since the introduction of the new pathway, 53% of patients have been safely admitted into a specialist ward without having to wait in the emergency department.