Ambulance trust that let half its 111 calls go unanswered at weekends is placed in special measures 


  • South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust in special measures
  • 44 per cent of patients calling at the weekend abandoned their calls 
  • Care Quality Commission said ‘not enough staff to keep patients safe’

Sian Boyle for the Daily Mail

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An ambulance service has been placed in special measures after staff took so long to answer 111 calls that almost half of patients gave up before they got help.

Regulators found the South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust was so dysfunctional that 44 per cent of patients calling at the weekend abandoned their calls.

The damning report by the Care Quality Commission said there was ‘not enough staff to keep patients safe’, and that a ‘high call abandoned rate … may reflect a high level of clinical risk for patients’.

The South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust has been placed in special measures (file photo)

CQC inspectors found serious problems with how staff were allocated to ambulances, meaning inexperienced or unqualified staff could be sent to patients.

There were also problems with ambulance handover times, with long delays affecting the availability of vehicles. But the CQC said it found ‘little sense of urgency’ in tackling the issue.

And it said that a recruitment crisis and high staff turnover meant there were not enough people to answer either 999 or 111 calls.

Yesterday NHS Improvement said it would place the Secamb trust as it is known, in special measures on the CQC’s recommendation and would appoint an improvement director. 

Secamb is the nation’s worst performing trust for answering 999 calls within five seconds, and is failing to achieve targets for the highest priority calls.

The trust, which provides services to Kent, Medway, Surrey and Sussex, is already mired in controversy.

Last year chief executive Paul Sutton and chairman Tony Thorne resigned following a high-risk pilot scheme in which thousands of calls were secretly downgraded.

Between December 2014 and February 2015, patients who were put through from the 111 helpline were made to wait ten minutes longer for ambulances.

Between December 2014 and February 2015, patients who were put through from the 111 helpline were made to wait ten minutes longer for ambulances (file photo)

The trust claimed they were being ‘re-triaged’ to check they were seriously ill, but the CQC said lives were put at risk.

In the new reports, the CQC ranked Secamb’s emergency and urgent care services as inadequate, and said its emergency operations centre and 111 service require improvement. 

The watchdog also said it found allegations of bullying and harassment, and that staff morale was generally low.

‘We heard that staff were tired and exhausted. Paramedics told us they felt burnt out,’ it said.

On 111, the regulator said: ‘The number of staff available was often below those identified as being needed to manage patients’ calls and this often led to long delays in calls being answered and calls being abandoned by patients, placing them at risk.’

The damning report by the Care Quality Commission said there was ‘not enough staff to keep patients safe’ (file photo)

Other damning findings included ambulance equipment not being adequately maintained, ‘exceptionally weak’ safeguarding arrangements and poor practice over infection control.

Earlier this year an investigation by the Mail disclosed how 111 call centres run by another NHS Trust were ‘not fit for purpose’, with exhausted staff asleep when they were supposed to be taking life-or-death calls. 

It led to an urgent inspection by the CQC, which in June gave the South Western Ambulance Service NHS Trust the first ever ‘inadequate’ rating for a 111 service.

Last night Secamb’s acting chief executive, Geraint Davies, conceded it was a ‘challenging time’ for the trust and that ‘serious concerns’ needed to be addressed.

He said 60 frontline staff had joined the trust since April, and it had developed a plan on areas including recruitment, retention and performance.

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