EMAS: Why am I contacting a GP?
EMAS/General Practice update - May 2024
We have received complaints about further incidents where EMAS technicians have contacted practices while attending a patient due to a 999 call expecting a GP to speak to them straight away to give advice or support. On one occasion this led to EMAS inappropriately referring a practice to the CQC.
The LMC has regular joint meetings with EMAS together with the other LMCs that EMAS covers, and we had believed that this issue was resolved last year. EMAS reassured the LMC that they had informed all their crews that GPs are not contracted or have any other requirement to provide support or advice to them. A poster was agreed with EMAS which they circulated to their staff which will be included with this communications.
Practices should aim to support their patients by cooperating with other organisations who may also provide care to their patients. However, there is no contractual obligation for practices to give clinical advice to EMAS crews.
We know that general practice is extremely busy, as are our colleagues in EMAS. They wish to assess and conclude appropriate disposition of the patient while practices are simultaneously dealing with patient clinics and other urgent matters.
There are senior clinicians in the EMAS control centre available when EMAS crews have a clinical query. Sometimes, crews may need to contact the GP practice to gain medical history, which your administrative team may be able to provide from the patient medical summary.
It is the choice of the practice if their team give advice to EMAS crews but is not contractual and practices are under no obligation to respond in certain timeframes as some have reported they have been told they must by EMAS crews.
Practices may wish to consider developing their own policy which may cover:
- Ascertaining the reason for the EMAS contact to the practice.
- Provide medical history relevant to support EMAS assessment of the patient.
- Escalate the contact to appropriate clinician if the practice has chosen to do so.
- Informed EMAS of possible timeframes of any response.
- Practice may offer advice if they choose but may also redirect EMAS colleagues to their own clinical supervision and advice pathway.
If offering clinical advice to an EMAS colleague, do consider that you are advising based on a clinical assessment you did not perform and so you must be confident in that assessment.
We also ensure that if you provide advice to EMAS that you keep very clear contemporaneous records as there has been later differences of account between EMAS and the practice.
If EMAS inappropriately request your practice to provide help outside of your contractual obligations or reasonable practice policy, then let the LMC know so we can raise directly with EMAS.