RECORD keeping errors are being blamed for the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust recording weak scores for quality of service and use of resources in the Healthcare Commission's annual healthcheck.
RECORD keeping errors are being blamed for the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust recording weak scores for quality of service and use of resources in the Healthcare Commission's annual healthcheck.
Chief executive Hayden Newton said that the scores, while disappointing, in no way reflected on the quality of care provided by staff across the region.
Scoring covers the year from April 2007 to March 2008, and takes into account performance against national targets, financial management and a number of other core standards.
“Our quality of services score results solely from errors in the response performance data submitted to the Healthcare Commission,” Mr Newton said.
“We discovered that, on a small number of occasions, “on scene times” for community first responders and healthcare professionals other than ambulance service staff were logged incorrectly in our Norwich control centre.
”Because of these errors, our data was classified as 'not returned' and we received a mandatory weak rating for quality of services. This score does not reflect on the care we provide to the public in the east of England and I would like to thank all of our staff for their continued commitment to providing the best possible service to patients.”
The Trust has since strengthened its auditing processes in control rooms.
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