Director Spotlight: Kerry McQuade. director of strategy, planning and transformation

Director Kerry McQuade is responsible for helping NEAS plan for the future – deciding where to focus investment, improvement and organisational effort, and turning those plans into meaningful change on the ground.

She explains: “I’m responsible for moving ideas into practice. As a relatively small organisation, our priorities have to be carefully balanced. Every investment or improvement comes with trade-offs, making it essential to focus on the changes that will deliver the greatest benefit for patients, staff and partners.

“As our strategy develops, one of the biggest opportunities we have is supporting more care closer to home.

“In practical terms, that means making it quicker and easier for our crews to book patients directly into primary care and community services, while expanding the number of pathways available through our emergency operations centre. This enables our clinicians to resolve more calls without dispatching a vehicle and helps reduce unnecessary hospital conveyances.

“Partnership working with community and district nursing teams is also creating more opportunities for us to support prevention, for example by directing patients proactively towards services such as smoking cessation and falls prevention, where appropriate.

“For system partners, the next phase of improvement for us is about ensuring local services are aligned with what clinicians can access in real time. The potential is significant, but pathways need to be visible to our teams, reliable and responsive if they are to make a meaningful difference.

“A particularly valuable piece of work we’ve undertaken was engagement with Healthwatch and VONNE. Hearing directly from patients and carers has provided a clearer understanding of what works well, where experiences could improve and where gaps remain.

“Some feedback we’ve received has challenged us, particularly around communication and helping people understand what happens after an ambulance is not dispatched or following contact with the service. These insights are being built directly into our developing strategy and operational plans.

“Feedback is reinforcing the importance of looking beyond a single episode of care and helping patients to feel more informed and confident about what happens next nut successful transformation for us depends on changes that work in operational reality, not just on paper.

“The redesign of working patterns within our unscheduled care teams is one example. Rather than being imposed on staff, changes were co-designed alongside colleagues and staff-side representatives, resulting in rotas that better reflect demand and provide greater flexibility.

“Challenges such as handover delays, rising demand and limited pathway access are rarely owned by a single organisation. Our most productive conversations with partners focus on understanding pressure points across different times of day and week, reviewing data collectively rather than in isolation, testing small, practical improvements such as escalation processes or cohorting models and being open about constraints across the system.

“Strong relationships play a crucial role for us. The trust we have built is enabling us to resolve issues quickly and collaboratively rather than relying on formal escalation processes.

“One point worth highlighting is how much ambulance services have evolved. NEAS is no longer solely a transport provider; it increasingly acts as a clinical hub, managing demand, triaging risk and coordinating care across multiple pathways.

“This creates significant opportunities for integration, but it also requires alignment across the system. When pathways are unavailable or difficult to access, pressure quickly builds and patients are more likely to be conveyed to hospital unnecessarily.

“I’m passionate about creating services that are sustainable for the long term.

“As the new strategy takes shape, our focus is on ensuring it is not only ambitious but deliverable – translating into tangible improvements for patients, staff and partners.

“The ambition is for us is to be a true integrator of urgent and emergency care, connecting patients to the right support first time. Achieving that will depend on designing solutions together, with a shared understanding of what is realistic, what is needed and where change will have the greatest impact.

“Thank you to everyone who has contributed to the strategy engagement so far. Further opportunities to get involved will be shared in the coming months, and partners are encouraged to join us at our AGM in October as we launch our plans for the next ten years.”