Trust's first purpose built Make Ready Centre opens

29 November 2011

South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust’s first purpose-built central reporting Make Ready Centre at Ashford, Kent, is now operational.

Staff from stations across south east Kent have been gradually moving over to the state-of-the-art facilities in Orbital Way during the last two weeks. The Trust specialist HART team will move to the centre in the New Year.

This new centre will provide the blue print for future Make Ready Centre which the Trust is looking to introduce across the south east region over the next five years.

The Make Ready initiative offers significant benefits for patients. Specialist teams of staff are employed to clean, restock and maintain vehicles which means our staff, who have routinely undertaken these tasks, can spend more time treating patients.

Under the Make Ready system vehicles are regularly deep-cleaned and swabbed for the presence of micro-organisms including MRSA and C Diff. Each vehicle is fully stocked to a standardised specification with equipment checked and serviced regularly. To reduce the risk of vehicle breakdowns, on-site vehicle maintenance experts are on-hand to undertake routine checks and maintenance.

SECAmb’s Programme Director of Estates, Geoff Catling said: “This new centre will ensure that our clinical staff are spending more time doing the job they are trained to do – treat patients.

“It is a fantastic facility providing the very best procedures for cleaning, restocking and maintaining vehicles.

“Staff and contractors have worked extremely hard to make this centre a reality and they should be immensely proud of what has been achieved here.”

Staff will now begin and end their shifts at the Make Ready Centre in Ashford but during their shift will respond from the network of strategically located ambulance community response posts located in Ashford North, Ashford South, Dover North, Dover South, Folkestone, Hythe, Lydd, New Romney and Tenterden.

The posts provide facilities for staff between emergencies and have been situated in areas to ensure we reach as many patients as possible.

Following the opening of the new centre, the Trust will now start the formal process for marketing the ambulance stations which once served the area. Part of the formal process for undertaking is work involves the Trust declaring the stations surplus to requirement. However, this declaration will also make clear where the Trust intends to maintain a presence on the site for the use as an ambulance community response post.