Dr Tracey Cooper
By Gary Culliton.
New HIQA key performance indicators (KPIs) for the ambulance service have been submitted to the Minister for Health for approval, it has emerged.
The Authority has been involved for the past two-and-a-half to three years with the Department of Health and the HSE in an attempt to “strategically improve the provision of ambulance services”, HIQA has explained. This process has involved looking at the number of paramedics and advanced paramedics, and introducing a call prioritisation system for patients who dial 999.
One aim is to ensure there are not too many ambulance control centres. “This is because wherever there is a control centre, there is a boundary, which is unsafe,” HIQA Chief Executive Dr Tracey Cooper told the Joint Oireachtas Health Committee.
“In an ambulance service, response times are fundamental, particularly for patients with immediately life-threatening conditions. The evidence is that for certain conditions, particularly heart attacks, the longer it takes to provide definitive care, the less likely the patient is to have a good outcome.”
The ambulance service KPI states that it has seven minutes and 59 seconds to get to all patients with immediately life-threatening conditions. “When we started out, HIQA knew the ambulance service did not have in place the information systems necessary to even carry out measurements,” Dr Cooper said.
gary.culliton@imt.ie
About Gary Culliton
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I fully support this move, it is time to stand up and be counted. Key performance indicators are the way forward, it will help reform the ambulance service and improve quality in care. We as pre-hospital practitioners need to make change happen, we have the reigns, we have the skill, now we have to show that we can do it. Excellent news, and great to see that things are moving forward in this service in conjunction with HIQA.