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The Hamad Medical Corporation’s (HMC) Ambulance Service is set to enhance its services in 2023, in several areas providing access to effective care for the people of Qatar.
Ambulance Service will focus on areas of technology, communications and training in order to continue improving performance levels, keep up to date with international standards, higher efficiency levels and patient experience, said Assistant Executive Director of the Ambulance Service, Ali Darwish.
“The role of the Ambulance Service is to deliver rapid emergency medical support to people experiencing a life-threatening injury or illness and provide subsequent transfer to an appropriate hospital emergency department,” Ali Darwish told The Peninsula.
“We will definitely implement expansions and take measures to enhance our services to cope with requirements,” he added.
He said that the services will be upgraded by adopting new innovations in technology for the Ambulance Service fleet. “Adopting the latest technology is unavoidable,” said Ali Darwish.
He also emphasised the importance of constantly implementing methods to further improve communications between the Ambulance Service crew and the patients and hospitals.
“Communication is a major factor for the Ambulance Service,” said Ali Darwish, adding it means communication between paramedics and patients or the caller and with the hospital.
“It ensures the paramedics on the ambulance and the medical team at the hospital work as a team without any communication gaps. The real-time communication between both the parties helps to understand and analyse the exact scenario and take medical actions,” he said.
Training for the crew is another Ambulance Service will focus during 2023. “Training will be conducted in coordination with all hospitals to further improve the services,” said Ali Darwish.
The Ambulance Service emergency response section provides pre-hospital admission medical care and transportation for people in a serious, potentially life-threatening incident. Ambulance Service response time is within 10 minutes inside Doha and within 15 minutes outside Doha.
The Ambulance Service Group also offers a range of other services including Patient Transport Service, Mobile Healthcare Service and Referral and Booking Management System.
The regular fleet of Ambulance Service includes 59 ambulances in rural area, 242 in urban area.
“With 75 dispatch points located across the country and a highly-advanced ambulance fleet, the Alpha unit with two ambulance paramedics transports emergency cases to the hospitals,” said Ali Darwish.
“There are 56 rapid response and supervisor vehicles: The rapid response unit with one critical care paramedic and one ambulance paramedic responses to emergency calls which require advanced medical interventions (clinical supervisory duties). While the 4x4 response vehicles with one distribution supervisor attend to emergency responses requires emergency response as scene management and operations supervisory duties at the scene of an emergency,” he said.
