East Anglian Air Ambulance - Cambridge Base is operated by East Anglian Air Ambulance (EAAA) and is a registered charity. It provides a helicopter emergency medical service (HEMS) and rapid response vehicle from its air base in Cambridge. The service responds to demands from the local NHS ambulance trust emergency control room, where critical care paramedics triage emergency 999 calls and liaise with EAAA to deploy the most appropriate resource.

We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out an announced inspection on 20 March 2018.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we ask the same five questions of all services: are they safe, effective, caring, responsive to people's needs, and well-led?

Throughout the inspection, we took account of what people told us and how the service understood and complied with the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

The main service provided by this service was emergency and urgent care.

Services we do not rate

We regulate independent ambulance services but we do not currently have a legal duty to rate them. We highlight good practice and issues that services need to improve and take regulatory action as necessary.

We found the following areas of good practice:

• The provider promoted a positive culture of learning and development. This included learning from incidents, encouraging staff development, promoting high standards of clinical knowledge, and increasing understanding of pre-hospital emergency medicine on patient survival rates.
• Staff maintained emergency equipment, medication, consumables, the air ambulance, and the rapid response vehicle to a high standard so the vehicles were ready for rapid deployment to emergencies.
• The registered manager ensured policies and standard operating procedures were comprehensive and reviewed in line with set review dates. The provider had embedded processes for maintaining patient safety, for example safeguarding and complaints and staff knew how to respond to and escalate any safeguarding concerns.
• There were effective systems in place to monitor service delivery and to improve performance, these included monitoring patient outcomes, and response times. The provider was part of local and regional networks to share performance data, adopt innovation, and quality improvement was at the heart of the service.
• The provider had established governance systems to monitor incidents, risk, and quality. Risk was owned at all levels of the organisation and managed appropriately, with key time scales and mitigating actions to reduce any adverse impact on the service, staff, and patients.
• Patient and stakeholder feedback was universally positive, with examples of staff going the extra mile to provide a service that was caring, responsive and met the needs of the local population.
• The provider had a clear mission, vision, and five-year development strategy focused on meeting the needs of the local population, enhancing staff training, skills, and knowledge whilst promoting innovation in pre-hospital emergency medicine.
• Staff universally described a positive working culture focused on providing patients with high standards of care, promoting team working with high levels of respect for colleagues and the leaders within the service.
• The service promoted the health and welfare of staff in innovative ways, including additional training in relation to promoting wellbeing, dealing with mental health and celebrating staff success.
• Staff described managers as highly approachable, supportive, and caring. The provider used innovative ways to promote staff wellbeing. A dedicated aftercare service for patients enabled staff to engage with the patient and discuss what happened to them as part of their recuperation.
• During our inspection, we found high levels of engagement with the service’s vision and strategy, led by the trustees and senior management team, and supported by the operational team, fundraising and volunteer staff.

Heidi Smoult

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Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals on behalf of the Chief Inspector of Hospitals

Given the nature of the service we were not able to talk to people who had received treatment from the East Anglian Air Ambulance service (EAAA). However we did read some comments that people had sent to EAAA following their treatment. One person described the service as, “First class” and another commented, “The air and land crews did a fantastic job and looked after my son very well”. We also viewed a noticeboard in the crew room full of thank you cards from people, praising the high quality care and treatment they had received from EAAA clinicians.

Staff we spoke with showed a high level of motivation and commitment to their work: one paramedic commented, “Everyone that works here, wants to work here and do their best, we are genuinely motivated people”. Staff also valued the open culture of the EAAA and that they were fully consulted and involved in all major decisions affecting the organisation.

We found that EAAA was compliant in all the outcomes we assessed. Evidence showed infection control procedures were robust, equipment used was fit for purpose and people received their care from staff who felt supported and valued in their work.

Given the nature of this service we were not able to talk with people who had received treatment from staff at EAAA. However we found that the EAAA was compliant in all outcomes that we assessed. We found that the service had good infection controls procedures in place to protect people from the risk of infection; that medicines were managed safely; that medical equipment was maintained and serviced regularly and that its recruitment procedures ensured that only staff with the right skills and training were employed to work in the pre-hospital emergency care field.