Humberside Fire and Rescue Service Now To Act as First Responders To Falls.
A trial scheme has launched across the Hull and East Riding area, where Humberside Fire and Rescue will work alongside local NHS services.
The six month pilot of the scheme is a new way of helping to ease strains of NHS services in the region.
The Hull FIRST scheme comes a part of the Hull 2020 transformation programme, which has 9 public services working together in the area, including Humberside Fire and Rescue, Hull's City Care Partnership, Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust and Humber NHS Foundation Trust. It's hoped that by combining these sectors response together will provide a fast 24/7 response to falls in the region.
In Hull last year, over 1000 people aged 65+ were admitted to hospital with injuries caused by falls in the home. Although many of the falls didn't cause serious injury, the fear from falling can cause residents to lose confidence, independence and social contact.
Viking FM spoke to Humberside Fire and Rescue's Deputy Chief Fire Officer Chris Blacksell who explained that his fire fighters are already trained to take on this extra responsibility...
'I've got firefighters who over a number of years have developed very good medical skills because we are dealing with a lot of road traffic collisions, and some serious trauma cases a lot of the time. Over the last few years we have increased that so we are now assisting Yorkshire Ambulance by acting as a first responder to a lot of those calls as well.'
'Firefighters that can respond to somebody that has fallen in their home, hopefully deal with them in a way which means they don’t have to come into hospital. But we also have that mind set on how we can stop that happening in the future. So there is a lot of preventative work that crews will do as well in terms of assessment.'
Emma Latimer, the Chief Officer of the Hull Clinical Commissioning Group also spoke to Viking FM and explained that this wasn’t a money saving idea; it's about taking a holistic approach to patient care...
'By the fire service responding we are keeping that resource to a patient who may need an emergency ambulance. And patients who have fallen, who might not be as urgent can be seen quickly. We are looking at 10-12 minutes response time.'
'This is about effective use of resources and public sector money. It’s also making sure a patient doesn’t have to repeat the same story ten times to different agencies, as we have one agency coordinating the response.'