North East Ambulance Service


North East Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust is the authority responsible for providing NHS ambulance services in North East England, covering the counties of County Durham, Northumberland and Tyne and Wear and the area of the former county of Cleveland in North Yorkshire. The trust was formed on 1 July 2006, following the merger of the existing North East Ambulance Service and the Tees division of the Tees, East and North Yorkshire Ambulance Service. Northumbria Ambulance Service and County Durham Ambulance Service had previously merged on 1 April 1999.
It is one of ten Ambulance Trusts providing England with emergency medical services, receiving direct government funding for its role. There is no charge to patients for use of the service, and under the Patient's Charter, every person in the United Kingdom, has the right to the attendance of an ambulance in an emergency. NEAS also provides patient transport services, or non-emergency services to patients in the area.
NEAS currently operates 107 emergency ambulances, 50 rapid response cars, 28 urgent care vehicles, two bariatric ambulances, 242 patient transport vehicles, five community paramedic cars, and 120 support service vehicles.

Performance

NEAS was one of four trusts in the country to receive a "good" rating in the 2006/7 Healthcare Commission Healthcheck report.
This was the highest rating achieved by any ambulance service for provision of care.
On 23 August 2010, the North East Ambulance Service announced it was trialling a new service known as NHS 111. The trials would mean that anyone living in the County Durham and Darlington area could dial 111 to access out of hours urgent care. The idea is for this service to be rolled out nationally and to replace NHS Direct.
Between April and October 2013, the service recorded 10,072 "incidents" in which handovers to hospital accident and emergency departments had taken longer than 30minutes and 499 which took longer than one hour triggering fines of £250,000.
In 2018, the trust said it would need 100 more paramedics to meet the new ambulance performance standards. This could cost £5million a year.

Services provided

Accident and emergency tier
Patient transport service tier
Control room

Locations and dispatch desk areas

The main trust HQ is currently based in Newburn Riverside, Newcastle upon Tyne. It is known as Bernicia House.
There are two control rooms currently operating for NEAS. Bernicia House ; Russell House. 999 emergency calls and NHS 111 urgent care calls are answered by call takers at both sites. The Patient Transport Service calls are answered by the call takers primarily at Bernicia House.
The main fleet workshops is based at Pallion in Sunderland. However a secondary workshop is located in Stockton-On-Tees.
The two main training centres for NEAS are based at Lanchester Road Hospital in Durham and at some fire stations in the area.
North East Ambulance Service are split into three divisions or dispatch desk areas. These are the NEAS ambulance stations including the dispatch desk they would come under in the control room.