Neuromuscular Disorders: Ambulance Services

(asked on 13th December 2016) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what discussions his Department has had with National Ambulance Service Medical Directors on ensuring that the best practice system of flagging people with muscle-wasting conditions to ambulance crews in London North West and North East ambulance services is utilised across all ambulance services.


Answered by
Philip Dunne Portrait
Philip Dunne
This question was answered on 19th December 2016

The Department has not had any recent discussions with National Ambulance Service Medical Directors on this subject.

NHS England has advised that it is working with all ambulance services in England to ensure the right resource is allocated to the right 999 call at the right time.

Currently the flagging of patients with long term conditions or longer term care needs is not used universally. However the development of technology to allow real-time searching of the National Health Service number as a unique patient identifier will significantly increase the value of placing ‘flags’ on patients with specific clinical needs. This will then reliably allow any attending healthcare professional to access care plans and special patient notes to help inform individual patient management. This is a component of the 2017/19 ambulance service national Commissioning Quality and Innovation framework.

Reticulating Splines