Emergency medical services in Scotland
Emergency medical services in Scotland are almost all provided by NHS Scotland.
Remit of the Ambulance Services
NHS ambulance services are required by law to respond to four types of requests for care[1], which are:
- Emergency calls (via the 999 system)
- Doctor's urgent admission requests
- High dependency and urgent inter-hospital transfers
- Major incidents
Scottish Ambulance Service
The Scottish Ambulance Service is a Special Health Board funded directly by the Health Department of the Scottish Government[2]. In 2006 the service responded to over 520,000 emergency calls. Scotland also has Britain's only publicly funded Air Ambulance service, comprising of two Eurocopter EC 135 Helicopters (based in Glasgow & Inverness) and two Beechcraft B200C King Air fixed-wing aircraft (based at Glasgow & Aberdeen).[3]
In financial year 2006/07, the service employed 3973 staff across 6 divisions and attended to 569,372 accident and emergency incidents.
The national headquarters are in Edinburgh and there are six divisions within the Service, namely:
- North West - (area HQ - Inverness)
- North East - (area HQ - Aberdeen)
- East Central - (area HQ - Dundee)
- South East - (area HQ - Edinburgh)
- West Central - (area HQ - Glasgow)
- South West - (area HQ - Ayr)
Measuring performance
The performance of the Ambulance service is measured by the government, as part of a system called 'ORCON'.[4] The Governments targets are to reach 75% of Category A (life threatening) calls - as decided by the computerised AMPDS within 8 minutes. A number of initiatives have been introduced to assist meeting these targets, including Rapid Response Vehicles and Community First Responders.
See also
- Air Ambulances in the United Kingdom
- Blues and twos
- Emergency medical services
- National Health Service
- NHS Scotland
- Fire services in Scotland
- Former UK Ambulance Services
- British Association for Immediate Care (BASICS)
References
- ^ "Ambulance Service Definition". Retrieved 2007-06-15.
- ^ "Scottish Ambulance Service Website". Retrieved 2007-06-15.
- ^ "Scottish Ambulance Service Air Wing". Retrieved 2007-06-15.
- ^ Nicholl, Jon (1999). "Emergency Priority dispatch systems - a new era in the provision of ambulance services in the UK" (PDF). Pre-hospital Immediate Care. 3 (71–75).
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