An ambulance service has set out its priorities for patient care over the coming year.

The East of England Ambulance Service Trust (EEAST) is focusing on seven key areas to raise standards in quality, including response times to patients, stroke and heart attack care, sepsis care, friends and family patience experience, services to frequent callers, and cardiac arrest care.

EEAST was criticised in February’s Care Quality Commission report after failing to meet response times to life-threatening 999 calls.

For the most serious incidents in 2013/14, nationally ambulances responded to at least 75.1% of calls in eight minutes as an overall average, but the Trust recorded a figure of 73.6%.

The national average for ambulance services attending calls within 19 minutes was 96% but the EEAST’s performance for the same period was 92.9%.

As part of its commitment to improving performance against national standards, the Trust has agreed a series of maximum response targets for 2014/15, which includes responding to 75% of serious incidents within eight minutes, and 95% of ambulance calls within 19 minutes.

As well as focusing on improving their clinical effectiveness for heart attack and stroke care, the Trust also intends to increase their monthly recognition rate of patients in the region who require hospital admission for sepsis care treatment – often for cancer patients – from 75% to 85%.

The EEAST Quality Account for 2013/14 is the first under the supervision of chief executive Dr Anthony Marsh since he was appointed to the post in January.

Dr Marsh said: “We want patients to be seen promptly and to be treated to high clinical standards in order to recover quickly. In the past year, great strides were made in clinical improvements including wound closure training for paramedics, a clinical record viewer to support our Hear and Treat clinicians, and recognition of our dementia pathways as best practice.

“I would like to thank our staff for their hard work and support in developing and enhancing the skills of our frontline staff, and we look forward to a year of achieving better high-quality care for patients.”

Under NHS regulations, all organisations publish quality accounts to set out clinical priorities for the coming year as well as reflecting on the past 12 months. For full details on the quality account for 2013/14 visit www.eastamb.nhs.uk