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85
Abnormal weather conditions
The dense fog which persisted in the London area from 5th to 8th December imposed
a very severe strain upon the service. During this period every essential call was answered,
although all other forms of road transport were virtually at a standstill and the movement
of ambulances was possible in many cases only with one member of the crew
walking ahead carrying a flare. Some members of the operative staff" of the service
walked many miles in this way and a total of 5,036 removals, consisting of 3,824 general
cases and 1,212 emergency calls, were dealt with.
In the days following the fog the number of requests for ambulance transport for the
admission to hospital of patients suffering from respiratory conditions rose to a very
high level and in order to deal with this situation it was necessary at times to restrict the
service provided for non-urgent cases—mainly the conveyance of out-patients to and
from hospital.
A number of letters were received from the Emergency Bed Service, hospital
management committees, etc., expressing appreciation of the work of the service
during and on the days immediately following the fog.
Calls for medical assistance
Calls are frequently received in the Control Room in circumstances indicating
that the summoning of medical assistance, rather than the despatch of an ambulance, is
required. In such a case the caller is either recommended to call the patient's own doctor
or is given the names, addresses and telephone numbers of local medical practitioners
who may be summoned in emergency. During the year 780 such calls were dealt with.
Inter-authority financial adjustments
Following the refusal, in 1951, of some local health authorities to accept recommended
increases, from 2s. to 2s. 9d. a mile for ambulances and from 6d. to 1s. 3d. a mile for
sitting-case vehicles, in the rates of charge previously agreed on a national basis for
application to ambulance work performed by local health authorities on behalf of other
such authorities, the Council decided to adopt the recommended rates as its standard
rates for inter-authority charges with effect from 1st October, 1952, or, in certain
special cases, 1st April, 1952, with the proviso that any authority charging the Council
at higher rates should be charged the full cost of any ambulance services provided by the
Council. To obtain as wide an area of uniformity as was practicable with the discontinuation
of the nationally agreed rates, it was decided further that adjustments between the
Council and local health authorities in the home counties should, on a reciprocal basis,
be at the rates of 2s. 6d. a mile for ambulances and 1s. a mile for sitting-case vehicles.
Home service
ambulance
department
Agency arrangements
With the continued operation of the arrangements referred to in my report for 1951,
whereby the home service ambulance department of the Joint Committee of the Order
of St. John of Jerusalem and the British Red Cross Society took over a large proportion
of the work involved in conveying patients to and from the limb-fitting centre of the
Ministry of Pensions at Roehampton, the number of patients conveyed by vehicles of
the home service ambulance department and the mileage run each shows an increase
over the figure for 1951 from 10,111 to 13,682 patients and from 263,087 to 285,075
miles. It will be observed that the increase in mileage is small compared with the increase
in the number of patients. This improvement in the ratio of patients to mileage is due in
part to the continuing substitution of 'ambulance-train-ambulance' journeys for long
road journeys of the type with which the home service ambulance department dealt
almost entirely prior to 1951 and, for the rest, to the greater economy of the ' decentralised
' arrangements in operation at the limb-fitting centre.