The Association of Ambulance Chief Executives (AACE) has welcomed the launch of the Welsh Ambulance Service’s New Clinical Model – a pilot programme that will enable the service to re-focus its efforts on improving patient outcomes rather than simply achieving time-based targets that may not necessarily be in the patient’s best interests.
The one year pilot will help the Welsh Ambulance Service determine whether this new way of working is better for the people of Wales, and improves the overall quality of care they receive through the service being able to make more appropriate and timely use of the range of responses they can provide for patients.
AACE Managing Director Martin Flaherty OBE says:
We welcome this new pilot which we consider to be a sensible approach and we will be monitoring the impacts with great interest. If successful, it could help inform the development and progress of other ambulance services elsewhere, while improving patient care and redistributing pressure more evenly across the broader health service.
For over forty years, the success of ambulance services has been measured purely on the time it takes to get to patients. However, while time can be a key factor for patients with immediately life-threatening conditions, it is not the only or best measure of success for the majority of our patients, and AACE has long supported much greater emphasis on the quality of care and overall outcome for patients as a more accurate barometer of an effective service, particularly where less urgent calls are concerned.
Across the UK, ambulance services have changed immeasurably in the past four decades. Not only do they face the highest-ever level of demand for their services, they also provide a broader range of care, to more types of patients, in more settings than ever before.
Today’s ambulance service is the backbone of the health service. Initiatives that help individual ambulance services play an even greater role in enabling people to receive the best, most appropriate care from other parts of the health service too – such as the New Clinical Model pilot in Wales – should be welcomed. These changes are very similar to changes that we have proposed for ambulance trusts in England and we continue to work closely with NHS England to explore new, more patient-focused performance measurements.”
