How the South Leicester Community First Responders Deployed D4H to Support Critical Medical Callouts

Customer Background

The South Leicester Community First Responders is a scheme founded and run by volunteers who give up their spare time to attend appropriate emergency calls in their own community. They are dispatched by the UK’s East Midlands Ambulance Service Emergency Operations Centre.

The East Midlands Ambulance Service always provides the fastest possible response to emergency calls using its conventional resources such as ambulances and fast response cars. However, for certain patients such as those experiencing cardiac arrest, every second counts. For every minute that passes without defibrillation, a patient’s chances of survival can decrease by up to 10%.

In the more rural and hard to reach areas of the East Midlands, Community First Responders have a much better chance of providing the immediate help needed prior to the arrival of an ambulance service crew.

The South Leicester Community First Responders, has deployed D4H to support their mission during COVID-19. Given the huge increase in callout demand due to the outbreak of COVID-19, their volunteers are being used to attend many more non-COVID-19 suspected callouts such as trauma-related incidents to help reduce the demand on the Ambulance Service. Along with increasing their callout capacity, the team has also been working with other local organizations such as the Salvation Army and other Food Banks to help deliver food parcels to those who are vulnerable and most in need.

The Challenge & Solution

The team needed a way to track their volunteer personnel and equipment assets. D4H Personnel and Training allows them to ensure all volunteer training, certifications, and qualifications are recorded and maintained. Proactive alerts mean that team members are notified well in advance of any training that’s due for renewal.

Similarly, SLCFR has a large inventory of specialist medical response equipment. Items can have varying maintenance schedules and expiration dates that need to be managed. They needed one central location to store all of their equipment information, in place of their spreadsheets which were difficult to maintain and could quickly become outdated. D4H Equipment Management enables the team to easily pull up the location, service history, expiration date, or inspection schedule for any item of equipment.

SLCFR rely heavily on donations from the public to run their operations. If you’d like to support their cause, you can click here to donate.