Yorkshire Ambulance Service has been told that it must improve the quality of some of its services following an inspection by the Care Quality Commission.  The general cleanliness of the inside of ambulances and procedures for disposal of clinical waste gave cause was considered worrying.

As so often, the issue of clinical waste management and associated safety and hygiene worries feature in a CQC report.

Clinical waste management is particularly difficult for ambulance Trusts. In acute service they can generate considerable volumes of waste, perhaps including vomitus which would give the ambulance a particularly unsavoury odour.

In better and less complicated times, it was easiest to drop off this waste at the A&E department and get back on the road, which in more recent times and as pressures on the ambulance service increase every further is a particular advantage. But now, most hospitals will refuse to accept waste from ambulances, and refuse replenishment of disposables stock that now require frequent returns to base.

It used to be easy, but awareness of cost has pit a stop to this. In discussion with and advising ambulance Trusts, the obvious solution of coming to some financial arrangement with hospital trusts simply won’t work as the ambulance and hospital Trusts and not geographically co-located and a simple financial adjustment would become at best tortuous and generally unworkable.