St John Ambulance - Midlands Region

Updated 30 September 2022

St John Ambulance – Midlands Region is a large independent service that provides urgent and emergency support to NHS ambulance services. The service has hubs across both the East and West Midlands including in West Bromwich, Newark, Coventry, Derby, Rugeley, Northampton and Worcester.

The service has not been inspected since the change in registration in 2020.

The current registered manager has been registered with the CQC since the service was registered.

The service provides the following regulated activities:

• Transport services, triage and medical advice provided remotely
• Treatment of disease, disorder or injury

The service provides the following services:

Emergency and Urgent Care Services (EUC)

St John Ambulance – Midlands Region provides Ambulance Care Assistants (ACA), Emergency Ambulance Crew (EAC), technician and paramedic crewed emergency ambulances to four NHS hospitals and one NHS ambulance trust.

St John Ambulance – Midlands Region provides comprehensive cover to events including sporting meetings and festivals. Unless transport to hospital is provided such provision is outside of the scope of registration. Provision within the scope of registration is reported under the EUC core service.

We initially also intended to inspect the patient transport services (PTS) core service. However, during the inspection it became apparent the service no longer carried out this activity.

Updated 30 September 2022

We rated it as good because:

• The service had enough staff to care for patients and keep them safe. Staff had training in key skills, understood how to protect patients from abuse, and managed safety well. The service-controlled infection risk well. Staff assessed risks to patients, acted on them and kept good care records. The service managed safety incidents well and learned lessons from them.
• Staff provided good care and treatment. Managers monitored the effectiveness of the service and made sure staff were competent. Staff worked well together for the benefit of patients and supported them to make decisions about their care.
• Staff treated patients with compassion and kindness, respected their privacy and dignity, took account of their individual needs, and helped them understand their conditions. They provided emotional support to patients, families and carers.
• The service planned care to meet the needs of local people, took account of patients’ individual needs, and made it easy for people to give feedback. People could access the service when they needed it.
• Leaders ran services well using reliable information systems and supported staff to develop their skills. Staff understood the service’s vision and values, and how to apply them in their work. Staff felt respected, supported and valued. They were focused on the needs of patients receiving care. Staff were clear about their roles and accountabilities. The service engaged well with patients and the community to plan and manage services and all staff were committed to improving services continually.

However:

• The service’s audits did not always ensure leaders could monitor compliance fully,
• The service did not always correctly date sharp bins when they were in use.
• The service’s medicines standard operating procedure did not make clear whether two staff need to sign controlled drugs medicines records and we saw variable practice.
• Not all staff had received appraisals.

Updated 30 September 2022