Join the Ambulance Accelerator Programme for the NHS:
Taking ‘call before convey’ to the next level
Clinicians across 10 Ambulance Trusts in the UK, including the whole of Wales, use Consultant Connect’s services to speak with specialists for advice (calls are answered in 14s on average). Calls are recorded for medico-legal purposes, and all data is captured.
Our services are helping to facilitate numerous successful local urgent care pathways, many of which can be replicated at pace for immediate impact.
Pathway examples include:
- In South Warwickshire, the Frailty pathway enables crews from the West Midlands Ambulance Service to contact the Acute Frailty Service at South Warwickshire University NHS Foundation Trust. This has resulted in a 50% reduction in ambulances conveying patients aged over 75 to ED, giving frail older adults an alternative to hospital admission.
- In Tayside, crews from the Scottish Ambulance Service contact the Flow Navigation Centre, GP Out of Hours Hub, Covid Assessment Unit, and Stroke Medicine specialists, often helping to find alternatives to ED attendance. A new COPD line has recently been launched in the area, enabling Ambulance staff to send messages to local COPD referral pathways. 44% of calls to acute specialties have resulted in the patient avoiding a trip to hospital.
- Milton Keynes set up The Maple Centre, to manage patient flow and improve existing SDEC pathways for crews from the South Central Ambulance service. Over 80% of calls have resulted in patients avoiding an unnecessary hospital visit.
Find out more and join our Ambulance Accelerator Programme
To help you implement and improve your ‘call before convey’ strategies, we are launching an Ambulance Accelerator Programme to support Ambulance and Urgent Care teams to share learnings, challenges, impact, and best practice pathways. A team of pathway redesign experts and project managers will be on hand to support replicating those pathways in your local area.
If you’re interested in finding out more or joining the programme, please complete this short survey, and we will contact you with further information.
To download further pathway examples, fill in the short form below:
Related materials:
- Ambulance Impact
- In The Press: New ‘silver triage’ service to help avoid unnecessary trips to hospital
- SDEC in South East London
- Consultant Connect bridges gap for frailty services for Ambulance Trust in England
- Integrated Frailty Service in SWFT
- In The Press: A&E capacity unlocked by Consultant Connect’s ‘talk before you walk’ tech
