East of England Ambulance Service - SHOCK NEWS!

East of England Ambulance Service - SHOCK NEWS!

BBC Television's Look East programme on Friday 10th October featured a Norfolk MP suggesting that the EEAS is too large, covering, or trying to cover, six English counties. He said that the more heavily populated counties such as Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire (and South Essex?) tend to pull resources from rural areas such as Norfolk and Suffolk, impeding their response times.

Originally the six counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Essex and Hertfordshire happily operated their individual ambulance services, with their own uniforms, protocols, languages and traditions. But under government reorganisation amalgamated into the one huge colossus we all love and cherish.

'Too large' is nonsense according to a top secret government report I've unearthed. EEAS too large? Not a bit of it. It's TOO SMALL apparently.  These plans - drawn up by a likely youngster on IT work experience and high on Red Bull probably - state that the East of England Ambulance Service should enlarge their empire; to be the World Ambulance Service.

The restructure will be achieved  in two stages:

First Stage: The UK Ambulance Service. 'All counties of the UK will be united' - the report's words, not mine. The report does not go into details but the plan would be implemented by the private company with the lowest tender and no scruples who state that they will manage it. This would increase efficiency and decrease the number of highly paid executives and administration staff - as it did when the six counties amalgamated (allegedly). The shortage of paramedics is acknowledged as a problem but would be easily solved by increasing all shifts to 20 hours with no breaks, and if the emergency calls kept rolling in, be expected to work in perpetuity.  New paramedics and battle-weary veterans would all have to sign a No-homelife Agreement. Generous pensions on reaching eighty years of age on the frontline however.

Second Stage: The World Ambulance Service. And here's the clever bit. All Frontline staff would be made redundant and replaced by medical call centres. These would be automated with no staff. Would-be patients would go through their own diagnostic algorithm via computer or phone in their own language, which would eventually ascertain after 75 probing questions that they do not need medical assistance at all, but invite them to sign up to the WAS newsletter. The contact page would list no contacts.

I've just made a preliminary approach to an high-graded official with an immense salary, within the present ambulance service, to ask their view. My initial question:

 'Firstly Mr ******* , right now, how are you going to solve the immediate problem of the non-retention of the newly qualified, and the haemorrhaging of experienced paramedics?'

'Well, we have a new strategy. We've tried bribing from other counties with golden hellos. And we've tried importing from abroad. It's not working. We are now going to have a recruitment drive on Mars - they've just found life there I'm told.'

That would mean The Solar Ambulance Service. (SAS.) Now that would be stupid - wouldn't it?