TRANSPORT SOLUTIONS
Then there is the issue of alcohol, which remains a huge problem. The Department of Health is trying to address it through its ‘responsibility deal’, although the medical organisations involved pulled out of the deal, saying the DH was giving the drinks industry too much of a say.
Fox said: “APAP wrote to the previous gov- ernment - without any success – to express our view that the drinks industry should reinvest some of its profits back into off- setting the impact that alcohol related calls have on our profession.
“In London alone they are dealing with around 66,000 alcohol related calls every year and this figure has risen by nearly 25% since 2005.
“The problem is that the ambulance serv- ice is having to invest some of its funding which should be used to respond to the sick and injured, to provide ambulance staff for ‘booze buses’, along with the provision of personnel to look after the intoxicated in special centres set up at times of heavy de- mand, such as New Year’s Eve.
“Alcohol related calls are time consuming for the ambulance service and the police. They tie up finite resources as we deal with the fall-out from excessive alcohol con-
“We continually have to manage the inappropriate use of the service in tandem with the life threatening and serious emergencies that should be the principal focus of our attention.”
sumption instead of dealing with more serious emergencies.
“Apart from seeking to address the socio- political issues around capacity and de- mand, there is also much going on within the ambulance service to help it work more efficiently.”
Going on Amber?
And the issue of targets has also been the focus of a review, Fox states. “The review also looked at the categories of calls and the various obligations imposed upon the ambulance service to respond to those calls within a certain time.
“There is a possibility that the category B or amber call determinant may be done away with altogether.
“I suppose in one way that will reduce the
immediate demand on the service, but then you still have the issue of how you deal with the demand in terms of whether it is a green or red call. It must be remem- bered that many of our category B calls are often more serious than some of the cat- egory A calls, so great care has to used to ensure these patients do not ‘slip through the net’.
“The ambulance service has been the vic- tim of a carrot and stick mentality where its funds are either received or taken away depending on its performance.
“This target driven culture has resulted in a demand driven profession where in- dividual ambulance services have had to relinquish the control of their resources and simply triage calls and dispatch am- bulances as quickly as possible.
“Our profession has never been better trained or resourced but it is overstretched by the continuing in- crease in demand and the political pressures and targets that have been placed upon it over recent years.”
Jonathan Fox
FOR MORE INFORMATION Visit
www.apap.org.uk
national health executive Mar/Apr 11 | 57
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