Serco’s urgent care out of hours service delivered for the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Primary Care Trust has been praised in a national survey.
A benchmarking project undertaken by the Primary Care Foundation (PCF) declared it as consistently one of the best performing services in the country in terms of speed and effectiveness of clinical assessment.
The benchmarking programme has assessed the efficiency of the telephone service and the effectiveness of prioritising and responding to different clinical assessments and has identified areas of best practice by rating the service in all key categories within each county and region.
The service in Cornwall has equalled the best in the country in terms of face to face responses to emergency cases within an hour and for completing clinical assessments of urgent cases within 20 minutes.
Karl Cole of Serco Health and director of the Out of Hours service in Cornwall said: “The PCF Report has only just been published and we’re still digesting all of its findings, but it is clear our performance is at a consistently high level and that we are leading the way in a number of categories.
“Given the geographical challenges presented by our predominantly rural county and the huge population increase during the summer, this is real credit to our extremely motivated team. But, more importantly, it provides a real reassurance to both residents and visitors in the county that we are absolutely committed to providing them with the best possible urgent care out of hours service.”
