Who we are and what we do
About NEAS
The North East Ambulance Service provides a number of NHS
services, and covers the counties of County Durham, Northumberland,
and Tyne and Wear, along with the boroughs of Darlington,
Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland and
Stockton-on-Tees.
That's 60 stations spread across a square area of 3,200
miles, and home to 2.6 million people.
We employ more than 2,000 staff and respond to over 360,000
emergency and urgent incidents per annum. Our fleet of more
than 500 vehicles clock-up close to 10 million miles per year.
We are also known for pioneering and piloting new
developments - most recently, the use of the NHS Pathways triaging system, and
also 111.
The NEAS Patient Transport Service helps those who
require transport to outpatient appointments, planning for over one
million patient transport service journeys per annum.
In some cases we use our ambulance car service drivers -
volunteers who help outpatients reach their appointments.
The A&E
service and Patient Transport Service are both supported
by the NEAS contact centres based at Newburn Riverside
and Hebburn, which manage in excess of 450,000 calls per
annum.
For major emergencies where there's a high risk to public
health, NEAS calls on its HART (Hazardous
Area Response Team).
The HART team are a group of paramedics who
are trained to go into the 'hot zone' of incidents.
NEAS also works closely with a number of voluntary
organisations, such as St
Johns Ambulance Service and the British Red Cross.
NEAS won a £45 million contract in 2012 in partnership with Northern Doctors Urgent
Care to roll out the NHS 111 non-emergency number across
the North East - a service it successfully piloted in 2011.
Volunteers are recruited and trained across the North East to
act as Community First Responders -
providing life support in the more rural parts of the region.
Community First Responders are alerted to an emergency by NEAS
ambulance control, and deal with a specific list of emergencies
until an ambulance arrives.
NEAS also provides first aid training on a commercial
basis to organisations in the public and private sector.
You can find out more about all of these aspects of our work by
exploring the website.
Our Partners
Our partners include two Mental Health Trusts, two Foundation
Trusts; Northumberland
Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust and Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS
Foundation Trust as well as 12 local unitary authorities, and
eight acute hospital trusts which can be found to the right.
How we are Monitored
Ambulance performance is monitored by the Primary Care Trust
Boards and is overseen by NHS North East - the
strategic health authority for the region. This body is the
representation of the Department of
Health in the area.
A&E ambulance services are paid for by NHS Primary Care
Trusts, of which there are 12 in the North East. You can find their
contact details to the right.
In 2013 the Primary Care Organisations will be replaced by
Clinical Commissioning Groups, of which there are 3 in the North
East Region:
Newcastle Bridges Clinical Commissioning
Group
Geographical area: Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Number of practices: 18
Population size: 161,110
Langbaurgh
Geographical area: Redcar and Cleveland
Number of practices: 16
Population size: 110,326
County Durham and Darlington
Geographical area: County Durham and Darlington
Number of practices: 90
Population size: 617,885
These Clinical Commissioning Groups will be free to
merge, expand or change location. Not all practices in a group
have to be physically located in the same area.
Each Clinical Commissioning Group will have an
'accountable officer' to take financial control of budgets from its
PCT. A new NHS Commissioning Board will calculate practice-level
budgets and allocate them directly to the groups. These groups
will then be responsible for commissioning NEAS.
There are a number of sparsely populated areas and isolated
residents in the North East, particularly in the rural parts of
Northumberland and Durham. The North East has a high level of
deprivation and experiences some of the highest levels of disease
prevalence in the country.
Poor health compounded by the rural nature of our region creates
pressure for NEAS to achieve performance targets. While
NEAS meets response targets on a regional basis it is more
difficult to achieve them at a divisional level.
Like every other heath service provider, NEAS is regulated by
the independent watchdog the Care
Quality Commission. The Commission rates all services on the
basis of quality of services to patients and use of resources in
which NEAS are consistently rated excellent and good respectively
making us one of the highest scoring ambulance trusts in the
country.
This score is the direct result of our hard working, skilled and
dedicated staff. In addition, an increased investment in ambulance
services in the last decade has led to improved ambulance
performance to emergency responses. NEAS is now reaching more
patients with life threatening conditions faster than ever
before.
Ambulances and rapid response vehicles are equipped with
technology such as heart monitors and telemetry, which let
ambulance crews send information about a patient's condition
directly to receiving hospitals. Paramedics now provide an
expanding range of care outside of hospital and have become mobile,
pre-hospital clinical care for all emergency patients.
Board Register of
Interests
The NEAS Board can confirm that it maintains a register of
interest and entries have been made in respect of the following
members:
- Alison
Fellows is an employee of Newcastle City Council and her
husband, Tim, is a partner in Dickinson Dees Law Firm.
- Peter Wood
is Chairman and Trustee of Charlotte Straker Project (Care Home)
which is a charitable company. He is a Director and Trustee of St
Oswald's Hospice
- Helen
Tucker has recently agreed to undertake voluntary work with
Tees Esk & Wear Valley Mental Health Trust as an associate
hospital manager; reviewing patients who have been sectioned under
the Mental Health Act
- Jeff
Fitzpatrick is a Director of three limited companies: Ecopanel
Systems, The Executive Director and World-Class Investors and is a
Trustee of Darlington & District Youth and Community
Association
- Kyee Han is a
Trustee of the Great North Air Ambulance Service
- Ann Fox is a
Company Director with the Communication Equation Ltd (providing
comms training to non-health and social care related organizations)
and Trustee of 'My New Hair Charity'
- Wendy
Lawson is a Director and sole shareholder of Consultants in
Contact Ltd which offers Contact Centre and management services to
Contact Centres and has declared the interests of her sister in
relation to a private partnership offering mediation and education
services, a National Charity promoting safe-professional
boundaries, her work as a caseworker with the Parliamentary &
Health Services Ombudsman and also with the Cleveland Police
authority's Standard Committee as an independent member.,
NEAS is satisfied that all of our directors are
appropriately qualified to contribute to setting strategy,
monitoring and managing performance, and ensuring management
capacity and capability.
NEAS's selection process and training programmes ensure
that non-executive directors have appropriate experience and
skills, and that the management team has the capability and
experience to deliver its objectives.
It complies with relevant legislation and is satisfied that, to
the best of its knowledge, using its own processes, it has and will
maintain effective arrangements for the purpose of monitoring and
continually improving the quality of healthcare provided to its
patients.
The board meets at least 6 times in public each year - details
of the meetings for this financial year can be found below.
2012/2013 Board Meeting
Dates
