I’ve just seen two stories in the Daily Echo about South Central Ambulance Service, which provides ambulances in Hampshire (also in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire), having come up with a plan to offer shopping vouchers worth £200 to crews called out to emergencies but who decide their patients could be treated by a doctor rather than in hospital.

Apparently it was to be called the GP Triage Reward Scheme and each week a draw would be held and prizes of £200 allocated to four crew members.

That’s £800 a week – and would have been £41,600 over a year!

But the scheme was cancelled when a number of people raised concerns, including members of the ambulance service.  

I’m horrified that anyone could even have dreamt up a plan like this.

If it’s part of an ambulance crew’s job to triage patients, why give them extra to do their job?

Surely they’re professional enough to judge properly without incentives like this and it would certainly worry me if I’d called an ambulance for someone in the family and was told they wouldn’t be going to hospital.

Would the crew be making their decision based on the state of the patient or due to the prospect of winning £200?

What do other people in Hedge End think of this?

The Daily Echo stories are called ‘Hampshire ambulance chiefs scrap treatment incentive draw’ and ‘Ambulance chiefs face rewards flak’ and you can read the articles by clicking on the links.