EMAS told to improve by the health watchdog
Inspectors found the ambulance service - which covers Grimsby and Scunthorpe - was suffering from a lack of staff and resources, along with high demand.
East Midlands Ambulance Service - which serves Grimsby and Scunthorpe - has been told to improve by the health watchdog.
Inspectors from the Care Quality Commission visited the trust last November and found that it was suffering from a lack of staff and resources against high demand for the service.
It meant patients' needs weren't always being met.
It's been given an overall 'inadeqate' rating.
However, the trust was rated as Good for whether its services were caring and responsive and it was noted that staff were exceptionally caring despite the added pressures on their workloads.
CQC’s Chief Inspector of Hospitals, Professor Sir Mike Richards, said:
“Our inspectors found that a number of improvements were needed at East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust.
“Our main concerns surrounded whether services were protecting people from the risk of avoidable harm at the trust. There was an unrelenting demand for emergency services combined with a lack of staff and resources to meet the need. We found that, while people were cared for and treated well, there were insufficient staff and a lack of appropriate skill mix to meet the needs of patients in a timely manner. “We found that staff were passionate about their jobs and committed to providing high quality, safe care for patients, but they also openly recognised they faced challenges and morale was low.
“Since our inspection we have been monitoring the trust and working closely with NHS Improvement and other stakeholders, such as NHS England.
“The trust leadership knows what it needs to do to bring about improvement and our inspectors will return at a later date to check on what progress has been made.”
EMAS Acting Chief Executive Richard Henderson said:
“The report recognises that we have been working really hard to improve response times to emergency calls. However there are concerns that ultimately relate to our lack of resource (staff and vehicles), made worse by the numbers often kept waiting at hospital, and lack of capacity to do things as quickly and as well as we need to.
“As a result we have been rated as ‘inadequate’ for safety. The report makes it clear that this relates to insufficient numbers of staff and vehicles – not to the quality of care provided by our staff. We are rated ‘requires improvement’ for the effective and well-led measures.
"We are sorry and disappointed that we have not met the required standard for these measures. EMAS is an emergency ambulance service and people in the East Midlands can assured that we always prioritise our response to our most critically ill and injured patients.”