NHS Confederation. Ambulance services and integrated care systems: lessons for effective collaboration (21 August 2023)

Summary

Four enablers of effective collaboration between integrated care systems and ambulance services.

Content

Key points

• England’s ten ambulance trusts occupy a unique position in serving large health populations, each spanning footprints of multiple integrated care systems. In the context of system working and place-based models of care, ambulance trusts are negotiating emerging systems within their geographic remit, adopting new ways of working to meet the needs of diverse systems across the populations they serve.
• With the move away from clinical commissioning groups to the new integrated care system framework, many want to see a rethink in how systems engage with their ambulance trusts to ensure co-design and co-production from their services as part of a holistic strategy for population health.
• To support this, NHS Confederation interviewed a range of NHS leaders from both integrated care boards and ambulance services to explore how they might evolve their relationship, and to examine the principles that underpin effective and practical collaboration.
• Interviewees identified four key priorities for effective collaboration: thinking creatively about the role of the ambulance service; focusing on data sharing; fostering cultures of collaborative planning; and nurturing relationships.
• By focusing on these four areas, system and ambulance service leaders can design arrangements and relationships that deliver vast improvements to their population’s health in the years ahead.
• Interviewees made practical recommendations for national and local partners about how this can be achieved. These include expediting the implementation of Provider Selection Regime; where appropriate, developing multi-ICB governance structures; and considering how ambulance service data can be used at neighbourhood, place, system, regional and national levels to maximise its impact.