East: Investigation of Ambulance Service

The East of England Ambulance Service is investigating what it calls five "serious incidents".

The Ambulance Service described a serious incident as a patient being harmed through problems or delays with the trust.

It comes just 4 days after they announced there'll be recruiting 350 more staff, including Paramedics - after criticism of their ambulance response times.

The serious incidents were discussed in meetings yesterday.

The East of England Ambulance service told Heart they hope to improve the service they provide. They said, "the ultimate aim of reporting incidents and serious incidents is so that the Trust can learn from what has happened and  improve the quality of the care we provide, through preventing similar incidents happening again." They added that "patient safety is extremely high on the Trust's agenda and improving clinical quality is one of the five improvement priorities for 2013/14."