WEST Midlands Ambulance Service ranks among the best in the country in its response to serious and life threatening calls, according to a new review of urgent and emergency care services.

Trust bosses say the report, by the Healthcare Commission, also highlights as best practice many of the key work streams the organisation is already taking forward.

Trust medical director, Dr Roger Cooke, said: “One of the themes throughout the document is that the outcomes and experiences of patients should be monitored much more closely.

“This is something that we have been calling for some time. It recognises the tremendous efforts of staff who are trained to ever higher levels and the care that they provide to patients.

“Another theme is the number of patients who end up in hospital when they could have been treated either in their own homes or somewhere other than A&E.

“We already have a large number of emergency care practitioners and all the data shows that their extended skills in primary care keeps a significantly higher proportion of patients out of hospital.

“Equally, one of the benefits of our reconfigured Emergency Operations Centres will be the ability of the trust to have doctors available to assess callers over the phone and triage them without the need for an ambulance attending.”

He added: “The progress the trust has made in call answering has been incredibly impressive. We now exceed the recommended standard of answering 95 per cent of calls within five seconds.

“As a trust, we also regularly share data with our commissioners, the PCTs and acute trusts. By working in partnership, we are trying to make improvements.”

“Also, over the last 12 months, a tremendous amount of progress has been made across the region in getting specialist treatment for patients with conditions such as heart attacks, stroke and serious trauma.”

He explained: “Overall, we see much in this report that brings hope and optimism for patients and we are committed to take forward the recommendations with our partner agencies.”