East of England Ambulance Service joins forces to create new 'Southern Collaboration' to improve patient care

The East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust (EEAST) has joined with four other southern ambulance services to launch a new collaboration to help provide the best care for patients.

The Southern Ambulance Services Collaboration (SASC) includes EEAST, London Ambulance Service NHS Trust (LAS), South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SCAS), South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SECAmb) and South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SWAST).

The new collaboration will mean the five Trusts can share best practice and work together to provide the best care to patients and support for staff and volunteers.

The five Trusts jointly face challenges such as evolving and complex patient demand, a constrained financial environment and ongoing recruitment and retention.

The chief executives of each trust have identified that now is the right time to formalise how they work together to respond to these shared challenges and deliver the best possible care to patients.

EEAST CEO Tom Abell said: “I am delighted with the launch of the Southern Ambulance Services Collaboration (SASC). We all want to improve the care and services that we provide to our patients and communities. We have been increasingly working together to make these improvements and now is the right time to formalise our collaboration.

“We will now work together to develop initiatives the collaboration will take forward to that will help us support each other more effectively, share best practice, and work together to provide high quality resilient care for our communities.”

The collaboration will focus its work on improving patient care and supporting staff in the delivery of our services, across all areas of operations.

The SASC will engage with staff to listen to their experienced views on the development of initiatives that cross ambulance trust borders.