It has been one year since the successful setup of the 365 Response Specialist Transport Management Call Handling Service, working to support the delivery of critical care to sick neonates, children, and adults in the East Midlands and wider area. Commissioned by NHS England Specialised Commissioning, the service was launched on 1 August last year.
The specialist team in 365 Response works closely with the National ECMO service and both the neonatal and paediatric transport services to ensure safe and efficient transport of patients from their local hospital to specialist care centres. The 365 Response team facilitate this through real-time multi-party conferencing and decision making. Multiple professionals are connected to ensure there is no delay in service for the patients and this is all underpinned by our bespoke developed 365 Smart Platform, which provides a full case management function and enables the team to review, audit, and record calls and activity. The team can take hundreds of referrals per month, which are dealt with quickly and efficiently.
Speaking last year at the beginning of the project, Gail Faulkner, Lead Nurse & ECMO Coordinator, University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust commented: “It has been a pleasure working with the 365 Response team. They have taken care to study our requirements in detail and have spent a lot of time with our staff and clinicians in designing a solution to fit our needs. We have now gone live with the service and I am pleased to report a smooth transition. We are looking forward to working further with 365 Response to realise more of our ideas for improvement and further developments to our service.”
In addition to working with ECMO, CenTre, and CoMET, the service was expanded to aid the transfer of critically ill adult patients to support the huge impact of COVID 19 where large volumes of new patients were transferred to specialist care centres in April, May, and June. The Adult Critical Care service was rapidly set up in just a matter of days to respond to the urgent requirements.
Moving into its second year, Nicky Davey, Matron for the CenTre Neonatal Transport team, commented on the progress that has been made and the impact that having this specialist call centre in place has had on their services.
“365 Response provides 24 hours a day, 7 days a week call handling and recording service for CenTre Neonatal Transport. This means a doctor who wants to refer a premature or sick newborn infant simply calls one telephone number and is connected to the neonatal transport team. This team can then use 365 Response to include other medical or surgical professionals to ensure appropriate advice is given to the referring team. The transport team also uses 365 Response to book ambulances and communicate with each other whilst out and about moving babies. It would be very difficult for our service to operate effectively without the call handling service.”
Nicky continued, “We’ve been working with 365 Response to ensure the call handling service provided meets our service needs. When there have been problems with the service we have found the team very responsive and issues have been addressed in a timely manner. Our monthly service meetings provide an opportunity to review the service and address any queries. The ability to listen to recorded calls easily is an added bonus for the CenTre management team.”
The 365 Response team is enthusiastic to continue the development of this specialist call handling service and September will see the appointment of new Associate Director, Chris Ackerman, who will lead on advancing the service.
Sarah Fatchett, 365 Response Founder, explains “we’re proud of the work we have been able to achieve for the NHS over the last 12 months, facilitating the transport of critically ill neonates, children and adults. This vital service that directly supports such dedicated NHS professionals was expanded to provide support for patients with COVID19 in April, May, and June and we hope to further develop the team in line with NHS England Specialised Commissioning’s requirements in the future.”
If you would like to talk to us about providing specialist transport call handling services, please get in touch using [email protected].
