Clean bill of health for ambulance service in Lancashire

Ambulance services in Lancashire have been given a clean bill of health after being rated as “good” in all categories by independent watchdogs.
Inspectors judge the North West Ambulance Service to be 'good' in all areas.Inspectors judge the North West Ambulance Service to be 'good' in all areas.
Inspectors judge the North West Ambulance Service to be 'good' in all areas.

But the Care Quality Commission (CQC) admits it was unable to complete its latest inspection of the North West Ambulance Service due to Covid-19.

Inspectors were still assessing how the service is led when they were forced to suspend their review in late February because of the coronavirus pandemic.

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Instead they extended their “good” rating from the previous inspection in November 2018.

Overall NWAS, which serves more than seven million people in the region, was found to be safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led.

The CQC says it found “examples of outstanding practice in Emergency and Urgent Care Services and the Emergency Operations Centre.”

But the report says there were also “areas for improvement” found by the inspection team.

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“We found several things that the trust should improve to comply with a minor breach which did not justify regulatory action.”

One of those was over 999 response times. The report says NWAS “should ensure it continues to take appropriate actions to improve ambulance response times in line with nationally agreed targets.”

The service was rated “good” across all categories in 2018, better than 2017 when it was officially classified as “requires improvement.”

NWAS employs 6,300 staff, backed up by more than 1,000 volunteers. Its 616 ambulance vehicles cover an area of 5,400 square miles across Lancashire, Cumbria, Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Cheshire and a small part of Derbyshire.It has an annual budget of £354m.