EEAST Strategy 2025-2030

Our vision, values and goals

Why we're here

• Our purpose We care for our patients, our communities and each other, making every minute count to save lives and improve outcomes for patients.

• Our vision Everyone in the east of England will have high-quality, urgent and emergency care, with providers of health and care services across the region working in partnership with EEAST to make this happen.

What we'll achieve

• Patient mission: To provide high quality urgent and emergency care that is fair, responsive and focused on patient need.

• People mission: To provide a supportive, inclusive, and empowering environment for our people. It will support individual and organisational performance.

• Partnership mission: To connect patients to the best care, at the right time, first time, every time, through working with our partners.

• Productivity mission: To be an innovative, efficient, and sustainable healthcare partner. We will meet the needs of our communities within the resources available to us.

How we'll work

• Accountable
• Respectful
• Excellent

As a health care provider, we operate in a context of ever-changing needs. We know that by 2040, a third of people in the east of England will be over 60, and many of these people live in rural or coastal areas. With more patients having more complex needs and living in harder to reach locations this will increase demand for our services. This is not just a challenging future we must prepare for - it is a reality that already impacts our service.

So, even with the improvements we’ve made in recent years, we need to continue to evolve how we deliver our service to respond effectively to the needs of our communities in the east of England. We’re excited about the improvement journey we’re on, and how this strategy sets our path for the next five years. We’re sharing with you our ambition for what we want to achieve by 2030. Most importantly, this ambition has been designed by our people, patients and partners, following EEAST’s most significant engagement programme to date.

Thank you for taking part.

Mrunal Sisodia, Chair

Neill Moloney, Chief Executive

There are four parts to our journey:

1. How we deliver for our communities

Our ambition is to deliver quicker, better care to our patients. We will put patient care at the heart of how we develop our service.

2. How we support our people to deliver our service

Our passionate and dedicated workforce deliver the best care they can every day. We will support and develop them as valued employees. We know, too, that this has a very positive impact on the care our patients receive as a result.

3. How we work with our partners to get patients to the best care

We can only deliver high quality, effective care to our patients if we work as one integrated health care system regionally. By working with our health care partners in the East of England we will get patients to the best care, at the right time, first time, every time. We will work shoulder to shoulder with other ambulance services to drive innovation to improve our service.

4. How we deliver the best service for the best value

We must build a service model that responds to patients’ needs, is sustainable long term and uses our resources well. We also take seriously our role in the local economy, in particular addressing health inequalities.

This strategy sets out how we will develop our role, not just as responders, but as leaders who can drive innovation and collaboration across our region. It sets out the next stage of our journey, not only continuing to improve but embracing bold, innovative approaches to the way we work. It calls for us to pull in the same direction, aligning to the same shared missions. And it shows how we are moving forward with a renewed commitment to our values – accountable, respectful, and excellent.

Together, with our people, our partners, and our patients, we will build the future of urgent and emergency care for the east of England.

On behalf of the community engagement group (CEG), we are proud to present the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust’s (EEAST) five-year strategy for 2025-2030. This strategy is a direct response to the financial and social pressures facing local NHS services, with a clear focus on delivering sustainable, patient-centred care.

As the demand for urgent and emergency services continues to rise, the strategy ensures that the Trust addresses immediate patient needs while planning for long-term resilience. It recognises the importance of balancing efficiency with high-quality care, even in the face of resource constraints. By prioritising innovation, the use of new technologies, and workforce wellbeing, EEAST aims to deliver improved patient outcomes.

The strategy also emphasises the importance of strengthening partnerships within the local healthcare system. By fostering collaboration across services, the Trust ensures that patients benefit from a seamless and integrated care experience.

As the Community Engagement Group, we play a key role in ensuring that patient voices are heard. We act as a vital connection between local communities and the Trust, ensuring that the experiences and concerns of patients, families, and stakeholders inform decision-making. Through this collaborative approach, we are committed to ensuring that the strategy leads to meaningful improvements in ambulance services across the east of England.

Ben Cronin

Community Engagement Group (CEG) member

We provide accident and emergency services for people in need of urgent medical treatment and transport in Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk. We make sure patients with serious or life-threatening injuries and illnesses get the care they need 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. We answer more than 1.1 million calls each year and more than 7,250 staff and volunteers are part of our team.

As well as treating and transporting patients who need emergency care, we provide telephone triage to around 94,000 people a year with less serious illnesses or injuries through our Clinical Assessment Service (CAS). We also operate two hazardous area response teams (HART) who specially trained to provide NHS paramedic care to any persons within a hazardous environment that would otherwise be beyond the reach of NHS care.

We offer non-emergency patient transport and transfer services in some areas of the east of England. This helps people with medical conditions or frailty who are unable to travel unaided to get to and from appointments in hospitals, treatment centres and other similar facilities.

We also operate several commercial services for the benefit of our patients, and which generate income to support EEAST to be more financially sustainable. These include our CallEEAST contact centre, TrainEEAST commercial training service and National Performance Advisory Group (NPAG), who are self-financed and offer a range of management services to both public and private sector clients.

All figures are for 2023-2024.

• Calls received: 1.1 million calls.
• Responses: Total incidents responded to 833,000.
• Our people: more than 7,250 staff and volunteers.
• 120 stations.
• 1.5 million contacts made.
• Hear and Treat: 94,000 responses.
• Non-emergency: Patient transport 480,000 journeys.
• Total income: £442 million.

Demographics

• Population: Around 6.4 million.
• Geographical area: 19,585 square kilometres.

We developed the EEAST Strategy 2025-30 through the Trust’s most significant engagement programme to date. It sets the direction for the Trust over the next five years, as designed by our people, partners and patients. We received more than 12,000 ideas, comments and votes from over 2,000 people, which together set:

• Where we’re going together and why.
• What we’re going to achieve on this journey
• Our ambition to improve what we do.
• Our promise to each other.

Our approach

Part 1: A full review of our policies, performance and health data, as well as stakeholder insights to tell us what was changing.**

We reviewed our policies, our Trust performance between 2020 and 2025, and health and demographic data for the east of England. Looking at these together, we produced insights into the nature and location of services that EEAST delivers. This gave us evidence about the increasing complexity we face in responding to an ageing population, living at the edges of our region on. This has led us to focus on:

• Working together with our partners to enhance performance and improve patient outcomes
• Tailoring care to the conditions our patients need an emergency response to
• The role of Hear and Treat and our approach to delivering this
• Culture, values and productivity
• The role of technology in innovating our processes.

Part 2: Our online engagement programme to hear from our people, patients and partners.

We used this analysis to create four big questions. These were then posed to our people, patients and partners over a six-month period. Questions explored what it means to be an ambulance service and what we can do to improve. We also looked at what it’s like to work at EEAST and how we treat one another. We received more than 12,000 ideas, comments and votes from 2,042 people using an online platform. We used these insights to develop the EEAST Strategy 2025-30. What we heard:

• We need a clear purpose and vision of the future with everyone pulling in the same direction, with clearly defined partnerships and measurable outcomes
• We need to make achieving our goals everyone’s job
• We need everyone to embrace continuous learning and new ways of doing things
• We need clear and shared behavioural expectations
• We need clear plans to deliver.

We are committed to engaging with patients to understand their experiences with EEAST via surveys and focus groups, as well as in-person and online engagement events with the public.

We value the feedback received from patients through compliments and complaints and use all this information to ensure that patient and public voice is championed within the Trust and is used to help us learn and improve. Where possible we will involve patients, the public and our volunteers in co-production of these improvements to maximise this impact.

Throughout the course of this strategy work, one critical piece of learning is that the public would value more information and education about the range of services and pathways that EEAST provide through its urgent and emergency work. As such, we will start to increase the education and learning element of our public engagement events from summer 2025. This will mean more informed and meaningful patient and public engagement that ensures patients feel we are delivering on our missions within our strategy.

WHY we’re here. Our direction is defined by our purpose and vision.

• Our purpose We care for our patients, our communities and each other, making every minute count to save lives and improve outcomes for patients.

• Our vision for our region Everyone in the east of England will have high-quality, urgent and emergency care. Health and care providers across the region will work in partnership with the East of England Ambulance Service to make this happen.

WHAT we will achieve over the next five years. Our four missions.

• Our patient mission: To provide high quality urgent and emergency care that is fair, responsive and focused on patient need.

• Our people mission: To provide a supportive, inclusive, and empowering environment for our people. It will support individual and organisational performance.

• Our partnership mission: To connect patients to the best care, at the right time, first time, every time, through working with our partners.

• Our productivity mission: To be an innovative, efficient, and sustainable healthcare partner. We will meet the needs of our communities within the resources available to us.

HOW we will treat each other and those we serve. Our values describe the culture we want and the behaviours you should expect from us all.

We are ACCOUNTABLE

• I am honest and do what I say I will do
• I collaborate to get the job done well
• I take responsibility for my own wellbeing and actions

We are RESPECTFUL

• I am inclusive
• I am empathetic
• I am compassionate

We strive to be EXCELLENT

• I develop the skills I need to do my job well
• I act on feedback
• I keep improving the way we work

Translating our missions into action

To deliver our PATIENT MISSION, we are focused on first:

Responding to our patients more quickly and with the service they need. We will make every minute count in delivering fair, high-quality care. This means reducing our response times to our emergency calls and improving the clinical service we provide.

Over the next five years, we will focus on the care we provide on the patients who most need us. This means reviewing and testing who we respond to and when, and how we work as a regional health care system to get all patients to the right care, first time, every time. Working with our regional partners is critical to this.

We will:

1. Agree the role and service that EEAST provides within the regional system.
2. Agree how we will best work together as one regional system to serve our communities and deliver care to all urgent and emergency patients.

To deliver our PEOPLE MISSION, we are focused on first:

Providing a more supportive, inclusive and empowering environment for our people. This means delivering our People Promise in line with the needs of our people.

Over the next five years, we will attract and keep exceptional people who enjoy working and volunteering at EEAST.

We will:

1. Have the right people in the right roles to deliver our patient mission. We will put in place the education and development to support our people in their roles every day.
2. Embed a more inclusive culture that values diverse perspectives. We will ensure that all voices are heard and respected. We will work to be more representative of the communities we serve. Everyone should come to work without fear of bullying and harassment.
3. Build a great place to work by investing in our people. This includes wellbeing, occupational health, and reward and recognition.

To deliver our PARTNERSHIP MISSION, we are focused on first:

Connecting more patients to the right care, first time, every time, through working with our partners. This means working closely with our partners, in particular unscheduled care coordination hubs. We will also work with NHS England and other local health care providers so that we get patients to the right care quickly.

Over the next five years, this means doing things differently. We will look to regional, national and international partnership models of care to ensure our health care system in the east of England can deliver high quality urgent and emergency care.

We will:

1. Co-design new models of care and service agreements with our partners.
2. Lead thinking and drive innovation within the regional system.
3. Use our unique role in the region to support our partners with our shared goals.

To deliver our PRODUCTIVITY MISSION, we are focused on first:

Becoming a more efficient and sustainable organisation. We will meet the needs of our communities while using our resources efficiently. We will plan how to use our resources better to achieve greater value ie, whether financial, environmental, social or economic.

Over the next five years, we will work as a dependable, innovative and sustainable partner in the east of England health care system.

We will:

1. Implement financially and environmentally sustainable fleet and estate plans.
2. Invest in digital, technology and data to deliver high quality and innovative patient experiences.
3. Drive coordinated and effective business decisions that deliver value for money.
4. Embed our social value principles in everything we do to benefits our communities.

The EEAST Strategy 2025-30 is for our patients.

Over the next five years, our patients will receive faster, more appropriate care.

Patients with non-life-threatening, non-emergency conditions will be directed to the right care. This could be a GP, pharmacist, walk-in centre or other community services. This will reduce ambulance waiting times for those most in need of emergency care.

Ambulances will respond to the most serious emergencies, so that every patient who needs emergency care gets it quickly.

You can expect:

Quicker emergency responses: If you have a life-threatening emergency, you will receive a quicker response time. This is because non-urgent cases will be directed to the right service for their needs.

Right care, first time, every time: You will be assessed early to direct you to a hospital or a community-based service, if you do not need an ambulance. This will give you faster access to the right care and reduce unnecessary transfers.

Improved confidence in services: Hospitals will know that when an ambulance arrives, it’s necessary. This will mean that each emergency department is prepared for the patients they receive.

The EEAST Strategy 2025-30 is for our people.

Our colleagues and volunteers will feel more fulfilled and supported, as their skills will be used more effectively.

Our people will have a shared purpose and clear direction. This will boost morale, improve retention, and lead to a more satisfied workforce.

You can expect:

To do what you were trained to do: Whatever your role, you will have the training and development you need to deliver your role. If you are a clinician, you will be able to focus on delivering emergency care, in line with your training.

Better performance: Personal development opportunities, health and wellbeing support, and access to the right support from our well-trained leaders will all help you to perform to your highest ability. We will support each other through effective team working to deliver our service.

Feeling that EEAST cares for you: Our renewed Trust values mean that you will feel EEAST cares for you as much as you do for our patients and our public. You’ll have fewer late finishes and you’ll be able to take breaks or stop for a meal. You’ll also have the tools, information and facilities you need to do great work.

The EEAST Strategy 2025-30 is for our partners, providers and commissioners.

The EEAST Strategy 2025-30 will mean that we collaborate better with partners across the health and social care system.

Bringing services together and creating clear pathways for care will mean that our partners can forecast and meet demand more effectively. This will reduce system pressure and improve care across the region.

You can expect:

• More effective collaboration We will work with you to direct patients to the right services without unnecessary delays. We will ensure that only those people in genuine need are taken to emergency departments. This means that hospitals and care providers will experience smoother patient flows.

• Better data for decision-making We will collect and share data more effectively with you. This will lead to better decisions about patient pathways and system improvements.

• Shared system priorities We will share goals, so that all parts of the health and social care system are working towards the same priorities. This will improve outcomes for patients across our region.

How we will deliver our role

To achieve our vision, we must have effective processes and approaches to how we run our business.

We need to develop our approaches to:

Effective planning: how we organise our planning and investments to deliver our aims.

• We will align everything we do with delivering our missions, within the resources we have. For example, how we can use our estate to deliver patient care more effectively. It will enable us to work better as multi-disciplinary teams focused on outcomes.

Organisational and personal governance: how we’re holding ourselves to account as individuals and as an organisation.

• Our purpose, vision, missions and values will guide our actions, at all levels. Our governance framework will support us to ensure everything we do helps to achieve our missions, and that we deliver what we say we’ll deliver.

Designing and delivering change: how we improve the way we deliver services to patients and how we run our business.

• We will capture insights from our patients, people and partners and involve them in delivering change. We will use technology to work and innovate better and to deliver and embed change.

Our people requested clear behavioural expectations. By listening to our people, we built a set of behaviours that encourage accountability, respect and excellence. These behaviours and the values they underpin are set out in the framework below.

This defines – how we will treat each other over the next five years.

We are accountable

• Integrity - I am honest and do what I say I will do.
• Collaboration - I collaborate to get the job done well.
• Wellbeing - I take responsibility for my own wellbeing and actions.

We are respectful

• Inclusivity - I am inclusive.
• Empathy- I am empathetic.
• Compassion - I am compassionate.

We strive to be excellent

• Personal development - I develop the skills I need to do my job well.
• Listening - I act on feedback.
• Innovation - I keep improving the way we work.