Scottish Ambulance

“Safeguard has provided a common approach to assessing risk across the service.”

About Scottish Ambulance

Scottish Ambulance provides an emergency ambulance service in Scotland to a population of over 5 million people.

• Number of locations 160
• Number of employees 4,000
• The Service undertakes over 1.6 million journeys every year

Project Summary

Rivo provided Scottish Ambulance Service with a common system to manage risk assessments, audits, DSE assessments and COSHH.  Safeguard’s comprehensive reporting, action tracking and automated email escalation functionality ensures that risks within the Service are reduced.

The Scottish Ambulance Service provides Accident & Emergency and non emergency services throughout mainland Scotland, the Western Isles, Orkney and Shetland, covering the largest geographic area of any ambulance service in the UK.  The Service has almost 4000 staff and operates from 160 locations, which include ambulance stations, home based operating points and air bases for the Helicopter Emergency Medical Service.

Business Needs

Across the Scottish Ambulance Service regions various paper-based systems were in place for audits, risk assessments, DSE and COSHH, but it was difficult to gather information and report on compliance for the entire organisation.   A single system was required to support a common approach to assessing risk, track the resolution of issues reported and allow monitoring across the Service.

Solution

Rivo’s Safeguard was chosen as it provides the Scottish Ambulance Service with a single, organisation-wide system for managing Health & Safety.  It also provides comprehensive reporting functionality that allows reports to be generated easily for locations, regions and for the whole organisation.   A significant Health & Safety concern for the Service is the lifting and carrying of patients – the flexibility of Safeguard allowed the specific needs of the Service to be met in relation to risk assessments for Manual Handling.

Return on Investment

Tony Wigram, Scottish Ambulance’s Health and Safety Manager, explains that “Rivo’s Safeguard system has provided the Scottish Ambulance Service with a robust framework for a consistent approach to managing and monitoring Health & Safety.   For the first time we can report easily on information from all our locations and as information can be shared between locations the duplication of effort has been reduced.  As the system is web-based it was ideal for the Scottish Ambulance Service as it can be accessed by staff from any location and it has a familiar look and feel making it very easy to use.”