GREAT Western Ambulance Trust has defended itself after receiving a poor bill of Health in a national performance assessment.

The Care Quality Commission labelled the ambulance service – which operates in Swindon – as ‘weak’ for quality of care and ‘fair’ for financial management.

The report also identified that Great Western Ambulance Service (GWAS) has never scored above ‘fair’ for quality and financial management.

But GWAS Chairman Tony FitzSimons said changes introduced in 2008 were helping to drive improvements in the service’s performance and quality of care, despite crews responding to more 999 calls than ever.

Almost 200 additional staff, a computer aided dispatch (CAD) system and a major overhaul of GWAS’s control rooms were among the improvements introduced in the second half of 2008/09 which Mr FitzSimons claims are delivering “real patient benefits”.

In today’s publication of the Care Quality Commission (CQC) Annual Health Check (AHC) ratings for 2008/09, GWAS’s quality of care and financial management ratings are the same as in 2007/08.

Mr FitzSimons said: “Last year (2008-09) was a time of great challenge and change. Clearly our performance over the whole year was not good enough, but many of the changes that were introduced in the second half of the year are now resulting in faster response times and other improvements to patient care.

“Our focus was on making sustainable changes that would deliver patient benefits over the long term. We were aware at the time that many of the improvements we introduced would not be reflected in the ratings for 2008-09.”

Mr Whiting, who joined GWAS in April this year, said: “When I arrived, I saw how things were already improving due to the efforts of everyone in the organisation, investments that had been made and the steps that had been taken in the second half of 2008/09.

“Those, plus further changes made in the current year, mean we are a significantly better service, while recognising we still have work to do.”

l IT is not all bad news for GWAS with the service ranked the best in the country for answering 999 calls this year.

Around 98 per cent of emergency calls are being answered within five seconds.

GWAS has also been praised by the Care Quality Commission for its infection control measures, particularly the use of specialist teams who keep ambulances clean between calls.

Improvements in performance have come despite GWAS crews responding to over 11 per cent more calls than last year – 124,857 for the six months from April to September, compared to 112,426 for the corresponding period in 2008 and the 2009.

“Response targets are an important element of patient care, and the fact that our performance against national targets has improved, alongside being called to record numbers of incidents, means we are getting to more patients more quickly than ever,” said Mr Whiting.

GWAS may have improvements to make but NHS Swindon is celebrating after maintaining a ‘good’ performance grade in the annual health check results.

The results for 2008/09 for NHS Swindon were an overall score of ‘good’ for its quality of services and ‘good’ for use of resources.

Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust received a ‘good’ rating for its quality of financial management and fair for quality of services.