Chamber and committees

The Scottish Ambulance Service have been undertaking a thorough investigation in to the incident on 21 July 2010. This has included reviewing the sequence of events on the day, considering how the contingency arrangements worked, understanding what the impact was on service delivery and, most importantly, auditing the clinical outcomes for patients. The ambulance service have been focussing on learning lessons and identifying actions that need to be taken forward by the service and others.

My officials were first notified of the problems being experienced in the call handling operations of the Scottish Ambulance Service at around 12:25 on 21 July 2010 and ministers offices were notified around 15 minutes later. We were then kept updated during the course of the day until normal operations were resumed.

The Scottish Ambulance Service swiftly put in place contingency plans to support 999 calls while the operation of the EMDCs was compromised. However, any compromise of the call handling operations of the Scottish Ambulance Service is of concern and the Scottish Ambulance Service therefore instructed BT to undertake a full review of the resilience of the telephony system.

The Scottish Ambulance Service have been undertaking a thorough investigation in to the incident on 21 July. This has included reviewing the sequence of events on the day, considering how the contingency arrangements worked, understanding what the impact was on service delivery and, most importantly, auditing the clinical outcomes for patients. The ambulance service have been focussing on learning lessons and identifying actions that need to be taken forward by the service and others.

As part of their investigation, the Scottish Ambulance Service have undertaken a clinical audit that has reviewed every 999 call on the day, as well as all of those patients for whom an ambulance was requested within one hour or two hours by their GP, with particular focus on the 125 patients who were routed outside of Scotland for their calls to be answered. Dr George Crooks, Medical Director of the Scottish Ambulance Service, has informed me that the clinical case mix and outcomes achieved on 21 July reflected those experienced when the service is working as normal and that there were no adverse outcomes attributable to the delays associated with the buddy system.

The Scottish Ambulance Service has advised that their normal call handling operations were impacted as follows:

Inverness EMDC between 01:05 and 14:55.

Cardonald EMDC between 09:56 and 14:00.

Norseman EMDC between 09:42 and 15:30.

This means that there was a period of just over four hours when all three centres were experiencing difficulty. The controlled close down and restart took place between 13:10 and 14:00.

During the overall period some calls continued to be answered by the Scottish EMDCs in the usual way, some were routed by BT to mobile telephones in the three Scottish EMDCs and, where necessary, some were routed to be answered by the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service or the North West Ambulance Service. These contingency arrangements are part of the established resilience procedures that are in place to deal with a scenario such as the one experienced on 21 July.

The Scottish Ambulance Service has advised that during the times of 01:05 to 15:45, the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service dealt with 121 calls and the North West Ambulance Service dealt with 28 calls, less than 10% of the incidents dealt with by the ambulance service that day. Of these, some calls were found to be duplicates, therefore 125 patients had their details taken and then passed back to Scotland for an ambulance to be dispatched.

The Scottish Ambulance Service has advised that during the times of 01:05 to 15:45, the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service dealt with 121 calls and the North West Ambulance Service dealt with 28 calls, less than 10% of the incidents dealt with by the ambulance service that day. Of these, some calls were found to be duplicates, therefore 125 patients had their details taken and then passed back to Scotland for an ambulance to be dispatched.

The preferred bidder, Brookfield, has an agreed position on the National Code of Conduct with the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and technicians (UCATT) and will formally enter into an agreement for the New Southern General Hospital Project following approval of the Full Business Case. UCATT will have a full time convener on site and Brookfield will support UCATT in seeking to ensure that the recommendations of the Construction Industry Joint Council (CIJC), with respect to pay and holidays, are adopted on the site.

More generally within NHS Scotland, the Frameworks Scotland national construction framework is used to support major public capital funded projects. Issues such as involvement of local businesses, skills and competence training employment and health and safety were factors taken in to account in the selection of the Principal Supply Chain Partners in the Framework.