ORH providing Facilities Planning services to Sport England

ORH is delighted to have been awarded both Lots 1 and 2 in the recent Sport England Strategic Modelling Services tendering process. 

ORH has managed the running of the Facilities Planning Model (FPM) for Sport England for the last 9 years and has now taken on the scoping and reporting of national and local jobs.  This means we can now offer an end-to-end service for local authorities; managing the entire service will also enable significant development of the FPM and its outputs to ensure it remains current, useful and accessible.

National and local bespoke FPM reports form an important part of the sports facility evidence base, and we look forward to working with local authorities and sports consultancies to deliver these and gain feedback to further increase the FPM’s functionality. Please contact us on 0118 959 6623 or at enquiries@orhltd.com for further information and to discuss your requirements.

The Impact of Covid-19 on Ambulance Response Data

As we begin venturing back into the office, ORH looks at the impact that Covid-19 has had on ambulance response data.

Historical data is an important element of ORH’s analysis for model inputs. The type and number of incidents that emergency service vehicles respond to play an important part in the forecasting of future incidents. When we come to analyse the data for 2020 there will be unusual patterns that will, hopefully, not be reflective of what we can expect of future behaviour.

NHS England releases the Statistical Note: Ambulance Quality Indicators each month, and the latest (published on 9 July 2020) reported that the number of 999 calls in May and June of this year were the lowest for two years. For the last four months, ambulance services have resolved incidents differently to normal practice. Usually just under 60% of incidents across England are conveyed to an emergency department, and around 30% of incidents are resolved at scene. As Covid-19 began to affect life in England during March, so the proportion of patients transported to hospital dropped and was lowest in April at 44%. The percentage increased in May, but was still only 53% in June when England began to emerge from lockdown as non-essential retailers reopened in mid-June.

There has also been a significant change in England’s ambulance response times. In March response times increased significantly as the number of Covid-19 cases increased, but then in April response times improved dramatically, even though Covid-19 cases were at their highest. Markedly   in May, ambulance response times were at their quickest since measures began in 2017 across all four response categories. There was a small increase in response times in June compared to May, but they remained lower than during pre-pandemic times.

For a third of 2020, how ambulances resolve incidents and their response times have been far from normal, and it remains to be seen what the rest of 2020 holds in store for us when it comes to predicting the future.

Additional Fire Station Opens Following ORH Study

Following ORH’s successful station location study for Tempe Fire Medical Rescue (TFMR) in Arizona, the department has recently opened an additional fire station in the city.

The City of Tempe has grown considerably in recent years, with the increase in population leading to more demand on the fire department, particularly in terms of EMS incidents.

ORH was initially tasked with evaluating historical performance, projecting future demand and optimising station locations across the city. The new site was identified through this process and we have supported TFMR with further modelling around the deployment of different vehicle types at stations.

We are pleased to see the new station come to fruition and look forward to the benefit it will bring to residents in Tempe and surrounding cities as part of the automatic aid system.

Greg Ruiz, Chief at TFMR, commented that “ORH’s valuable input enabled TFMR to make best-practice decisions for our future, driven by a detailed critical analysis and a practical and professional decision-making process”.

ORH works with fire services around the world to match resources to risk in an appropriate manner.

(Photo courtesy of Arrington Watkins Architects)

International Control Room Week

NSW Health Share.

International Control Room Week is a week to specifically celebrate the unsung heroes of the emergency services, run by Hull technology firm APD Communications.

This is being held for the second time from October 21 to 27, and is supported by fire, ambulance, police, coastguard and airport staff across the country. The campaign week highlights the critical role played by the control room teams that keep people safe and deal with traumatic incidents daily.

Emergency service control rooms are often the heart of the service, providing an essential function that can go unrecognised. An effective control room needs the optimal staff mix and to manage resources dynamically using innovative technology. ORH supports emergency services around the world to operate more efficiently.

http://www.internationalcontrolroomweek.com/

The Talent Developing ORH’s Software

Our unique models are designed to help emergency services make difficult decisions in real time and plan for the future. To keep our software at the cutting edge, we have a small team of talented developers working hard to innovate and solve new problems. Tom has been working at ORH for the last six years developing, maintaining and supporting our software, which is used both externally by clients and internally by our consultants. His profile explores in more detail the interesting projects he’s been working on recently.

ACT Government Invests in Emergency Services Following ORH Review

The ACT Government in Australia has announced plans to deliver additional emergency service vehicles and stations based on the advice of ORH’s review of the Station Upgrade and Relocation Plan (SURP). ORH used projected changes to both population and road journey times to create 2028 demand scenarios for both the ambulance and fire services in Canberra. Our simulation and optimisation models were used to predict changes to operations and identify the number of vehicles and locations required by each service to maintain and improve emergency response standards in the future.

As a result, the ACT Government will now begin work on two new combined ambulance and fire stations, to be located in the City and Molonglo Valley. They will also recruit more firefighters and invest in a new aerial platform vehicle to improve their response capabilities to the growth in higher density and multi-storey buildings. Further details from the ACT Government can be found here.

Do Response Times Still Matter?

At the recent LGA Fire Conference in Brighton, ORH was very pleased to run a busy workshop session looking at response times and attendance standards for fire and rescue services. We presented innovative analysis on the increases in response times to fires in England and Wales, and the implications of these. To support our quantitative assessment, we were joined by Dave Etheridge (past president of CFOA) who offered his insights from an operational perspective. The full abstract from the workshop was as follows:

Over the past decade the number of incidents attended by UK fire services has fallen, yet it has coincided with an increase in average response times.  At a time when HMICFRS is asking services to demonstrate efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery, it’s essential that FRSs understand why it now takes longer to respond to fewer incidents.  In this workshop we will consider the effect this trend has on the fire service and the public, the factors that are driving it, and the strategies management has at its disposal to reverse it.

Using the most recent national data on incident statistics and response times, we will examine the relationships between key performance indicators and, more specifically, how longer response times can affect operational outcomes and society.  We believe that this new insight will promote lively discussion about the importance of response times, and how to quantify these through real time data analytics.  For comparison purposes, we will present analysis on trends for fire services internationally and on ambulance response times in the UK.  Finally, by using conclusions reached during the analysis, we will explore potential approaches for reducing response times, optimising coverage and, ultimately, reducing risk to the public.

If you would like to view the slides from the presentation, or have any questions about the issues raised, please contact Graham Holland (graham.h@orhltd.com).

ORH’s DCT Cited as Good Practice For Fire Services

Wales Audit Office has published a report on the maturity of local government in use of data. This report investigates the technology available to public sector organisations, the rate of technological change and the importance of data-driven decision making. The objective is to explore the extent to which local authorities in Wales are making use of these processes.

We are very pleased to see that ORH’s Dynamic Cover Tool (the DCT) is cited as an example of best practice by fire services, with particular reference to its application in London Fire Brigade (see page 47 of the report). The DCT helps to improve incident and risk coverage and ensures that resources are used as efficiently as possible. More details are available here.

ORH Presents 10-year Paramedic Services Plan to Wellington County Council

Guelph-Wellington Paramedic Service’s 10-year plan, developed by ORH, has been approved in principle by Wellington County Council following a presentation to councillors in May. In particular, the suggested relocation of the Hillsburgh station was supported by the City of Erin’s Mayor. The move, alongside increased staffing, will improve response times in the area significantly. The full plan recommends relocating four stations in the County and enhancing vehicle deployments by 588 ambulance hours per week. South Western Ontario’s news website covered the Council meeting; further details can be found here.

ORH’s Patient Transport Modelling Featured in the OR Society Magazine

Find out how ORH’s patient transport simulation modelling helped HealthShare NSW, Australia, in the latest edition of The OR Society’s Impact magazine. Software engineer Tom Boness and consultant Hannah Mayes from ORH discuss how a collaborative approach with HealthShare NSW enabled them to maximise efficiency across the state as they transitioned to a new model of patient transport. You can read the full article in the Spring 2018 edition, as featured on the publisher’s website.

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