Setting Up A Service & The Future

In this interview we look at how to set up a new transfer service…

Please note that the interview is extensive (23 minutes) and you may wish to return to it when it is convenient for you, or read through the transcript instead. We have summarised some key points below.

Dedicated transfer teams are a still a new development in the UK, different to many other countries in which these were implemented decades ago…

• To set up a service depends very much on the geography of the area and on the transfer platforms available. For example, can you deliver a time-critical service to a large geographical landscape as a transfer service?
• SPRINT is an example of a service that can reach most of the hospitals in their area within 30 minutes. The national ambulance service takes a median of 18 minutes to reach the sending hospital, so compared to this it makes sense to use the transfer service for time-critical moves.
• This will be very different if the area involves longer distances to reach a referring hospital, but some services use helicopters to get to time-critical patients faster and only use road vehicles for the planned moves.

Dr Peter Beaumont is head of SPRINT, which is a good example of one of the newly setup transfer services in the UK, based in London….

• They operate two teams a day from 8 in the morning until 10 in the evening.
• The average number of jobs is 3.6/day, and about 55% of patients are level 3 patients. For hospitals it is helpful to transfer level 1 patients who are at risk of deterioration before they have to be admitted to the sending hospital ICU.

15% of the jobs are time critical, 50% urgent and 35% planned

• Listen to Dr Beaumont answer questions about the staffing, equipment, trolleys and vehicles used and how to organise a service, the logistics and the geographical area covered.
• The feedback from hospital teams and patients is integral and motivating to increase the cover and scope of the service in future.