LANCASHIRE'S new £1.3 million ambulance control room has double the staff, state-of-the-art technology, and will answer more than 292,000 calls every year. We visited the facility today to find out more.

UNTIL November last year, ambulances across Lancashire were controlled from a cramped room within the North West Ambulance Service's centre in Broughton, near Preston.

But the health service is changing, and new pressures on hospitals and the public means new facilities are vital.

The new building, which took 10 months to complete at the Broughton site, gives operators more space to work, along with large, dedicated rest rooms.

Members of staff who have been trained as counsellors will also be on hand to create a less hectic environment for workers often taking harrowing calls and life-or-death decisions.

At the moment, the centre is still covering only Lancashire with 86 staff.

But by August, 100 people will work at the centre, taking on the 60,000 calls which come from Cumbria each year, along with the 230,000 from Lancashire.

Almost identical centres have also opened in Manchester and Liverpool, and all three are live-linked to one another, allowing immediate takeover of calls if power fails at any of them.

The North West Ambulance Service will also be taking on responsibility for helping take pressure off hospitals.

The new health control desks provide constant monitoring of all hospitals in the North West, meaning ambulances can take the pressure off clogged-up wards, and make sure emergency patients get the treatment they need quickly.

Chief executive of the service John Burnside said: "People often don't realise that the ambulance service is much more than just emergency vehicles with flashing lights.

"We transport patients between hospitals, run the patient transport for operations and now we also have to look at different ways of responding to calls.

"The health control desks are a real boon to us - they're very important as hospitals become more centralised."

The system means that if a patient has suffered a stroke, and the nearest town's stroke beds are full, a less ill patient can be transferred to another hospital, freeing space for an emergency case.

Sector manager Dave Ward added: "All hospitals get blocked up from time to time, and out job is to get patients treated as quickly as possible - if our ambulances are stuck at the hospital because it's full, they can't get back out to attend to other patients to it slows the whole process down.

"Being able to manage capacity properly is going to make a big difference."

Another new feature for the control centre is its clinical assessment desk, where all calls are monitored, and people making regular 999 calls for persistent problems can be identified and contacted, giving the patient the best advice on how to tackle their illness.

Mr Ward said: "One of the things we have to do now is look at different pathways for care.

"That can mean getting the local first responders or the local GP emergency service there first for the more serious cases, and we can give people advice on where else to call if an ambulance or hospital isn't the answer."

Derek Cartwright, area director for Cumbria and Lancashire, added: "Unlike the fire service, we don't get a lot of hoax calls, but we do get calls from people who don't really need an emergency ambulance but don't know who else to call.

"That's when the clinical assessment team get involved, and that eases things in the future because that patient will know exactly what to do next time.

Staff are constantly updated on the calls they have received, their response performance and major incidents on 12 plasma wscreens around the centre.

They average at around 83 per cent of category A calls - those where the patient's life is in immediate danger - within eight minutes, against a government target of 75 per cent.

Data is also constantly collected on the time taken for ambulances to get to hospital.

Mr Burnside said: "We are really very proud of what has been achieved here - the system in Broughton is being duplicated across the North West, and what we are learning goes beyond the ambulance service and into improving patient care throughout the health system.

"We've gone from a little room within the main building to a purpose-built centre that can cope with everything required of the modern ambulance service."