Ambulance service reports savings through IT

East Midlands Ambulance Service is claiming that installing a telephone assessment system and decision support tool has saved it around £1.8 million in 2005 through preventing unnecessary ambulance journeys.

The TAS Odyssey system, from Plain Healthcare, helps to triage the least urgent category C calls received by the ambulance service. Despatchers put these calls through to nurses who use the system.

Around 50% of category C calls that go through the system have been found not to require the despatch of an ambulance, says EMAS. These are now directed to emergency care practitioners, out-of-hours services or dealt with by simple telephone advice by the nurses.

Speaking at the Healthcare Computing 2006 conference in Harrogate, Val Stoner-Hobbs from EMAS told delegates: "In 2005, East Midlands Ambulance Service saved 6,936 emergency ambulance journeys. Currently our savings are the based on cost per hour of an ambulance, in total £1.9m"

The system went live towards the end of 2004; in 2003, there was no triage of Category C calls at all. Stoner-Hobbs explained that the emergency care practitioners are becoming increasingly confident with the system over time: "They’re seeing far more patients." The EMAS spokesperson added that teams now had in-house training on the system.

TAS Odyssey presents the user with a list of questions to ask the patient, sorted by priority and colour coded. If any of the answers point towards life-threatening conditions, they are immediately flagged.

Stoner-Hobbs explained the service’s future plans for the system included trying to look at specialist areas, including in urology and paediatrics. "We also want to extend the nurses to 24/7. We want to look at Category B calls."

"It’s just about providing the right patient care in the right place," she said.

Plain Healthcare says that TAS Odyssey "is designed to support, not replace, normal assessment methodology, leaving practitioners to make the decisions. There is no ‘de-skilling’, as is evident with more algorithmic systems; in fact the extensive referenced information on differential diagnoses and rationales for lines of enquiry will enhance skills and knowledge."

EMAS covers areas in Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Rutland and claims to be the largest provincial service in the UK, covering 2.6 million people.