** UK ambulance service increasingly using police cars for hospital transports
** UK House of Lords peer advocates using fire trucks for patient transport
UNITED KINGDOM NEWS
** An ambulance shortage in Cambridgeshire has prompted the increasing use of police cars to take EMS patients to hospital. That is the word from the Cambridge News (Raymond Brown/November 29) which said between April and October of this year cruiser cars have been employed for the purpose 41 times. According to the newspaper, the news comes as the East of England Ambulance Service publicly stated it needed 30 million pounds extra to achieve response time targets. Police Federation spokesman Oz Merrygold decried the practice of using law enforcement to plug prehospital gaps. Merrygold said using untrained police as medics is a recipe for disaster. Cambridge MP Dr. Julian Huppert, meanwhile, said the approach is undermining public trust in EMS.
** In a related story, a Conservative House of Lords member is advocating using fire trucks to take patients to hospital. The Standard (Nicholas Cecil/November 29) quoted Lord Selsdon, who lives in France half of the time, as saying fire should be employed anytime an ambulance can’t arrive on-scene in a timely manner. Selsdon was speaking during a debate on A & E matters, including the closure of some London emergency departments. London Ambulance Service director of operations Jason Killens quashed of idea of fire being involved in patient transport. He did, however, say the service was not averse to fire personnel cooperating with EMS staff at life-threatening calls.
