This is not the first Ambulance Trust scandal. If we are to have a system “In Place of Fear“, then the Ambulance service is essential. There is however, no reason that Ambulances should be free to all citizens… When NHSreality began we warned about the conflict in managers meeting both financial and quality objectives. Ambulance failure is part of a pattern..
Agency Press reports in The Guardian 15th March 2016: Ambulance chief quits after 999 furore
The chairman of the scandal-hit South East Coast ambulance service has quit as the furore over its delays and mis-reporting of 999 attendance figures spread.
Tony Thorne, quit his post just six months after the trust was blasted for its “experiment” – delaying sending help for some calls to allow extra time for patient assessments – which ended in failure.
Whistleblowers inside the trust said that under-fire chief executive officer, Paul Sutton, who has been on unexplained annual leave since last Monday, was expected to also resign.
Staff were told seven days ago that Sutton was “just on annual leave for a week” but he was still absent.
Thorne’s resignation follows a crisis meeting of bosses at the trust. Last October, it emerged that Secamb, which covers Kent, Surrey, Sussex and north-east Hampshire, delayed sending help for certain 111 calls as part of a pilot project. It transferred them instead to the 999 system to re-assess what type of advice or treatment patients needed and whether an ambulance was really required.
The trust defended the project but acknowledged the “serious findings” of a report into the practice which was exposed last week.
