Release Date :  Thursday 18 February 2010

The Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) has published its strategic framework for the future of ambulance care – ‘Working Together for Better Patient Care 2010-2015”, following the completion of the most extensive national consultation in the organisation’s history.

The SAS vision is to deliver the best possible patient care for people in Scotland, whenever and wherever it is needed and seeks to achieve three main goals:

• to improve access and referral to the most appropriate care;
• to deliver the best service for patients;
• to engage with all partners and communities to deliver improved healthcare.

Pauline Howie, Chief Executive, Scottish Ambulance Service, said:
“Our ambition is to deliver a patient-centred service that is clinically effective and fully involves our partners, staff and the communities that we serve.  We have listened to a wide range of views, experiences and ideas to develop and shape the Strategic Framework.

“Making sure that patients know how to access the most appropriate care for their condition is a key challenge for NHS Scotland as a whole. Whether it’s an emergency or a minor illness, there are times when patients are transferred between agencies. Our consultation showed that there is support for us to review and improve how patients access appropriate help, particularly when it is unscheduled.  Our aim is to ensure that all patients, whether they call 999 or any other agency, receive a consistent response and are quickly directed to the most appropriate service for their needs.

“We aim to deliver the best and most appropriate services to meet the clinical needs of patients. In order to achieve this we need to clearly define the services required, raise awareness with patients and partners and ensure that we have the skills and resources in place to deliver the highest quality of service.

“In remote and rural areas we have the opportunity to use the skills of our highly trained staff in a much more innovative way that should result in fewer trips to hospital and better treatment in the community.  We will work with communities and partners to develop tailored and integrated healthcare that works best for the community being served. This work has already been progressing and a number of models for care in remote and rural areas have been developed with the Remote and Rural Implementation Group.

“We recognise that our planned developments will have to be delivered in the context of fiscal restraint, providing the best possible value for money and best outcome for patients. To achieve this, we will undertake a comprehensive review of efficiency and effectiveness in conjunction with the framework.”

The consultation and engagement programme was undertaken during 2009 and involved over 60 meetings across Scotland with stakeholders and patient groups as well as a comprehensive programme of meetings with staff.  Over 3,000 stakeholder organisations were contacted.

The Scottish Ambulance Service employs 4,300 highly skilled staff and responds to almost 600,000 Accident and Emergency calls each year, around 450,000 of which are 999 emergency calls.  The Patient Transport Service takes more than 1.5 million patients to and from hospital appointments and the air ambulance flies over 3,000 missions annually. The Service transports more than 96,000 patients between hospitals every year.