The Scottish Ambulance Service touches the lives of almost everyone in Scotland at one point or another. Every year, we receive approximately two million calls for help. A very small proportion of those calls come from people who are in immediate need of our services—for example, those who are suffering from cardiac arrest.
The number of unscheduled care presentations is increasing. We have a range of different responses to patients in various circumstances, for example, elderly patients who have fallen. We provide almost one million patients with help in getting to and from their hospital appointments. We host the SCOTSTAR—the Scottish specialist transport and retrieval service—for the most acutely ill patients in Scotland who require to be transferred to specialist facilities.
We host the Scottish air ambulance service, and we have special operations teams that respond to tragic events like the one in Manchester last night. Like the convener, I want to place on record our thoughts for all those who have been affected by the tragedy in Manchester, and our thanks to our emergency services colleagues, especially those in the North West Ambulance Service.
The Scottish Ambulance Service is changing. Like the rest of the national health service, we operate in the context of increasing demand for healthcare services, public service reform, tight financial budgets, an increase in the elderly population and a workforce that is getting older. We have listened to our staff, to the public and to our partners, and we have embarked on a significant transformation of our service, which involves taking care to the patient. The reform programme means that we are basing our service on clinical evidence and on staff and patient experience. The aim is to provide care for patients where and when they need it, in the most appropriate setting, which might not be a hospital. Last year, we treated more than 100,000 patients where they want to be treated—at home or in a homely setting—and we saved more lives of patients who had had a cardiac arrest.
Our reform programme means investing in equipment and technology, but fundamental to everything is investing in our staff. We are developing our workforce through further education and the development, enhancement and addition of new roles and clinical skills for staff, and we will train 1,000 new paramedics by 2020. As we continue to introduce our new programme and the next phase of our clinical-based response model, we know that we still have a lot to do. We are only part of the way through the reform programme.
We know how valuable it is for members to see our service at first hand, and it was great to see so many committee members in ambulance stations and ambulance control rooms recently. We would welcome other committee members joining us to listen to staff and to hear and see for themselves at first hand the work that they do and the ideas that our staff have for further development of our services.
We will be pleased to answer your questions, and we seek the committee’s support for further improvements in our service. We need to develop new models of care with and for communities. Those models of care must be sustainable, particularly in remote and rural locations. We need to provide alternative transport options for those patients who do not require the skills of ambulance staff, and we must continue to develop performance standards that matter to people. People tell us that what matters to them is improved positive outcomes and being treated with care and compassion.