Strategy
SECAmb’s strategy focuses on transforming the ambulance service into an urgent and emergency care navigator; delivering a personalised model of care to meet increasing patient demand and complexity, whilst ensuring long term operational and financial sustainability in an increasingly pressured health and care landscape.
None of us are strangers to the immense challenges faced by urgent and emergency care, where demand consistently outstrips supply. The ambulance service is the frontline for these challenges.
This is further complicated by SECAmb’s scale: it serves 5.1 million people and receives over 2.3 million calls per year – and demand is growing. Over the next five years, this demand is projected to increase by over 15% due to a growing and ageing population with more complex health needs. SECAmb has not been able to keep up with demand, leading to very low morale, a significant financial deficit, and ultimately being placed into ‘special measures’ by the NHS.
Moorhouse were engaged to co-design an ambitious strategy that would address SECAmb’s critical challenges and ensure sustainable operations and improved patient care. Our fundamental values as an organisation means that our engagement approach maximised the co-design ethos.
We embedded with the SECAmb team for the duration of the engagement, creating a team with a perfect blend of strategic, clinical and health sector expertise. Our engagement with colleagues and system partners included public surveys, clinical working groups, ideation workshops, job shadowing, ambulance ride-outs and call centre drop-ins. We also held a two-day hackathon which brought representatives from staff and partners to build out strategic options together. Over a 6-month period, we engaged over 3,000 stakeholders to deliver a solution that the entire workforce and partners can genuinely own and buy in to.
At the core of our solution was an innovative patient segmentation and new clinical approach. We defined new ways to meet patient needs virtually and matched need to best fit response, making best use of a skilled workforce and protecting the ability to respond physically within six minutes.
Overall, the strategy enabled SECAmb to:
- Develop an ambitious, personalised model of care for patients
- Have stronger partnerships with system partners and proactively support efforts to reduce demand for Emergency Departments
- Improve efficiency and staff morale by dispatching the most appropriate resource to better triaged calls
- Improve financial sustainability through reducing unnecessary dispatches, optimising resource utilisation, and matching staff skillset to patient need
- The strategy has redefined SECAmb from a traditional ambulance provider to an ‘Urgent and Emergency Care (UEC) Navigator,’ whereby SECAmb takes a lead role within the wider health system to assess needs, deliver care, and collaborate with partner to care for patients with less urgent needs.
In the first year of strategy implementation, SECAmb has become the first ambulance trust to implement five Integrated Care Hubs. Paramedics now work alongside A&E consultants and other medical professionals to undertake virtual consultations. A single hub has avoided over 1,200 emergency admissions and saved £6 million. This move not only benefits the trust and system partners, it plays an important role within the wider health system, enhancing care provided to benefit millions of patients in South-East England.
View the Moorhouse Consulting profile in the MCA Members Directory.