RESPONSIBILITY for providing ambulance services for patients in Gwent will rest with Aneurin Bevan Health Board from next year, under radical proposals unveiled by health minister Mark Drakeford.

Wales’ seven health boards will become responsible for buying in emergency ambulance services for their areas, while working together to ensure Waleswide cover.

The Welsh A m b u l a n c e Services NHS Trust – which is to be renamed – will become just the provider of those services.

This fundamental shift is among a series of proposals announced by P r o f e s s o r Drakeford following the McClelland Review of Welsh Ambulance Services, published in April.

Health boards must also, by the end of September, present plans for separating emergency ambulance services from the patient transport service.

And from the beginning of April 2014, a new set of response time targets must be in place, based not on the current ‘blanket’ eight-minute standard for category A emergency calls, but reflecting clinical need and potential outcome, focusing the speediest outcomes on timecritical conditions, such as cardiac arrest, stroke and trauma.

In the meantime, health boards and the ambulance trust must publish more comprehensive information on response times, providing a greater context to performance.

A new National Delivery Organisation (NDO) will be formed to commission ambulance services, involving chief executives from Wales’ seven health boards, who will be expected to work together.

The process of funding a multi-million-pound emergency ambulance service will be changed, with the NDO overseeing the moving of money, from health boards as buyers of services, to the delivery organisation.

Prof Drakeford considered breaking completely with the past and dissolving the ambulance trust, but believes this would be too costly, and torturous, a process.

“Health boards will now be unambiguously responsible for securing the provision of ambulance services in Wales,” he said. “They will commission ambulance services based on local need, ensuring people across all communities in Wales receive a bespoke service.”

Failings laid bare in review report

THE report of the review by Professor Siobhan McClelland, visiting professor in the health economics and policy research unit at the University of South Wales, and now vice-chairman of Gwent’s Health Board, laid bare an ambulance service dogged by weak accountability, and complex and unclear management systems.

Acting on its findings, Prof Drakeford appears determined to draw a line under the Welsh ambulance service’s chronic shortcomings.

Even the word ‘ambulance’ is not included in his suggested change of name for the trust - the Welsh Emergency Medical Service.

“I want a name that better describes the emergency clinical service that is being provided and one which the public can understand, and use, as such,” he said, though he is open to other suggestions.

Along with a new name comes another significant change, with seven non-executive positions on the current ambulance trust board up for renewal or new appointments.

These board members will be assigned to advise a health board, and be expected to attend its meetings.

Prof Drakeford said the reforms are designed to create an environment for them to provide the highest quality services.