Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 22 February 2023
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health
Ambulance Services, Recruitment and Retention of Personnel, and Response Times: Discussion
Mr. Robert Morton:
I will mention some high-level pieces. I will ask Professor O’Donnell to comment because he has been intimately involved in the entire process. From our perspective, the first thing has been to look at the escalation protocols. Mr. Merriman's team has worked with the chief operations officers of all the hospital groups in order to look at how we escalate the issue when ambulances are delayed. That is about trying to bring more timely and more localised escalation and has been well received. We have also looked at the model of cohorting, which means that when there are two or three ambulance crews at the hospital, one ambulance crew will look after two patients to release another ambulance to get it available to await 999 calls. The hospital ambulance liaison person has been a big feature in supporting and driving that relationship as well. I ask Professor O'Donnell to comment on that.
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