Yorkshire Ambulance Service

Organisation

Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust (YAS) serves a population of five million people and employs over 4500 staff and supported by over 1000 volunteers. On an average year, YAS will respond to 700,000 emergency calls and conduct one million patient transport journeys.

YAS's main roles are to:

Geography

Yorkshire Ambulance Service covers the metropolitan counties of West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire along with the non-metropolitan counties of North Yorkshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire.

The headquarters of YAS is located within the Wakefield 41 Business Park to the north of Wakefield city centre and near to junction 41 of the M1 motorway. There are two Administration Centres, one covering the northern area of the Trust, based in Skelton, York and the other covering the southern area of the Trust, based in Moorgate, Rotherham.

Accident and Emergency operations are divided into the following Clinical Business Units (CBUs) almost conterminous with the geographic boundaries:

Leadership

The Chief Executive is Rod Barnes who was made substantive in his role in May 2015 and prior to this, was the Interim Chief Executive and Executive Director of Finance and Performance. His background is generally finance-based and he has worked in a number of other NHS provider organisations including Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust and Great Western Ambulance Service. He began his NHS career at Airedale and Harrogate district hospitals and has held a wide variety of leadership positions.

He replaced David Whiting, who was Chief Executive between February 2011 and November 2014.

Other former Chief Executives were Jayne Barnes OBE (1 July 2006 – 14 January 2008) and Martyn Pritchard (15 January 2008 – June 2010). Barnes emigrated to Australia to take up the post of Assistant Commissioner of Queensland Ambulance Service (South East region) and Pritchard left to take up a role at the Strategic Health Authority.

Previous members of the executive team have left under less than auspicious circumstances. David Forster, the Policy and Strategy Director, resigned his position in 2010 after stating that the NHS employed "too many who are lazy, unproductive, obstinate, militant, aggressive at every turn" he also claimed some employees "couldn't secure a job anywhere outside the bloated public sector where mediocrity is too often shielded by weak and unprincipled HR policies".

On 8 March 2016, the trust announced that the incumbent Chairman, Della Cannings QPM would be standing down from her position after six years with her final date in office being 9 May 2016.

History

Yorkshire Ambulance Service was formed on 1 July 2006 around the same time as many of the ambulance services in England merged with neighbouring services to become conterminous with the government regions following the 2005 publication of the Taking Healthcare to the Patient: Transforming NHS Ambulance Services report by Peter Bradley CBE. The previous ambulance services are outlined below:

West Yorkshire Metropolitan Ambulance Service

WYMAS was formed in 1974 covering the then new metropolitan county of West Yorkshire and the Craven district of North Yorkshire. It brought together some of the individual city ambulance services which existed across the area and in 1992, it became an NHS trust, providing 24-hour emergency and healthcare services to more than 2.1 million people across the region. WYMAS had 21 ambulance stations within its operating area.

Tees, East and North Yorkshire Ambulance Service

TENYAS was formed on 1 April 1999 as a merger of the former Cleveland, Humberside and North Yorkshire ambulance services and served the urban areas of Middlesbrough, York and Hull along with the rural areas of the Yorkshire Dales and Yorkshire Wolds.

South Yorkshire Ambulance Service

SYAS was formed in 1974 as the South Yorkshire Metropolitan Ambulance Service covering the then new metropolitan county of South Yorkshire. On 1 April 1992 it became an NHS Trust and served over 1.4 million people in an area of over 600 square miles (1,600 km²).

Fleet

YAS operates just over 500 emergency vehicles which are a mix of Double Crewed Ambulances (DCAs), crewed by two members of staff (usually a qualified Paramedic or Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) working with an Emergency Care Assistant) and Rapid Response Vehicles (RRVs) which are crewed by a single paramedic, EMT or Emergency Care Practitioner. The emergency fleet is primarily made up of Mercedes Sprinter ambulances and Skoda Octavia rapid response vehicles.

YAS also has over 450 Patient Transport Service (PTS) vehicles which are operated by around 696 PTS staff.

YAS can deploy rescue helicopters, including two Airbus H145s of the Yorkshire Air Ambulance to emergencies and incidents across the service area, however the Air Ambulance Service is a charity and not an integral part of YAS – paramedics are provided by YAS and work on a rota with doctors who are voluntary members of the BASICS (British Association for Immediate Care) to offer additional medical skills.

The Trust entered into a contract with Medical (Europe) Ltd of Malton trading as North of England Ambulance Service by which it could call on up to 13 ambulances, each with two crew members, to cover staff shortages in 2012. This contract was ended in early 2014, however YAS has the ability to call on private companies and St John Ambulance to provide cover in times of extreme need, and a long term contract is held with St John to provide fully crewed ambulances to YAS for emergency and non-emergency work.

Staff roles

YAS employs 4,679 staff, who together with 1,055 volunteers, provide a vital 24-hour emergency and healthcare service. The largest proportion of staff, over 62%, are employed in operational patient-facing roles including Accident and Emergency, Patient Transport Service, NHS 111, Hazardous Area Response Team, Yorkshire Air Ambulance paramedics, Emergency Operations Centre, Resilience and Special Services, Private and Events, Resource and Embrace paediatric and neonatal transport service. There are various job roles which enable the service to operate, here are a few that are directly involved in the frontline and the control room of the service:

Emergency Operations Centre

Operational A&E Frontline

Operational Patient Transport Services Frontline

Patient Transport Services Communications

Voluntary

Accident and Emergency

In 2013–14, YAS staff received 795,750 emergency and urgent calls, an average of over 2,180 calls a day. YAS responded to a total of 708,883 incidents by either a vehicle arriving on scene or by telephone advice. Of these, 267,716 were categorised as immediately life-threatening.

Like other English ambulance trusts, YAS has experienced year-on-year growth in activity since it was established in 2006; overall response activity was up by 2% from 2012–13 to 2013–14.

YAS delivered the national emergency response target (75% of immediately life-threatening calls were reached in eight minutes and 95% of these calls within 19 minutes) for the third consecutive year in 2013–14. This was only achieved by YAS downgrading a large number of calls to a less serious category, they are due to be investigated by the CQC for this.

Patient Transport Service (PTS)

YAS PTS is the largest ambulance provider of non-emergency transport in Yorkshire and the Humber. In 2013–14, YAS PTS undertook 886,312 non-emergency journeys.

Transport is provided for people who are unable to use public or other transport due to their medical condition. This includes those:

NHS 111

YAS runs the NHS 111 service in Yorkshire and the Humber, Bassetlaw, North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire. The service took its one millionth call in February 2014 and is one of the highest performing NHS 111 services in England. Up to the end of 2013–14, the service responded to 1,100,599 calls, 94.9% of which were answered within 60 seconds (the national target is 95%).

Yorkshire Ambulance Service Charitable Fund

YAS has its own Charitable Fund which receives donations and legacies from grateful patients, members of the public and fundraising initiatives throughout Yorkshire.

The Charitable Fund exists to support the work of the Trust. Key uses of funds include the provision of additional training and equipment for services over and above the level that would normally be delivered as part of core NHS funding.

During 2013–14 and continuing into 2014, the Charitable Fund has been focusing its efforts on raising money for community medical units, which provide on-scene medical treatment for patients with minor injuries and illnesses, and public access defibrillators.

YAS Community and Commercial Training

The YAS Community and Commercial Training Department has provided first aid and other training services to the NHS, local community and many other organisations for over 15 years. Income generated from these commercial activities is used directly to help fund YAS community initiatives in Yorkshire and the Humber.

University First Responders

Students from the Hull York Medical School (HYMS) and Community First Responders (CFR) from across Yorkshire received training from YAS at Hull Royal Infirmary. In 2012 there were 63 medical students who trained as Community First Responders in Hull and York.