The Emergency Medical Retrieval and Transfer Service (EMRTS Cymru) was established on the 27 April 2015. The service was commissioned “to provide advanced decision making & critical care for life or limb threatening emergencies that require transfer for time critical specialist treatment at an appropriate facility.”
EMRTS Cymru is commissioned by the Emergency Ambulance Services Committee and is hosted by Swansea Bay University Health Board
EMRTS Cymru has been developed to bring specific benefits to Wales, specifically:
• Reductions in geographical inequity for patients with critical care needs.
• Health gains by improving clinical outcomes.
• Improved clinical and skills sustainability – improving the clinical skills, recruitment and retention in key acute care areas.
There is also a service provision for the enhancement of neonatal and maternal pre-hospital critical care (both for home deliveries and deliveries in free-standing midwifery-led units ).
The service provides a highly-trained critical care team comprising consultants (from an emergency medicine, anaesthesia and intensive care background) and critical care practitioners (who are paramedics and nurses). The service has two main areas of activity:
• Pre-hospital critical care for all age groups (i.e. interventions/decisions that are outside standard paramedic practice).
• Undertaking time-critical, life or limb-threatening adult and paediatric transfers from peripheral centres for patients requiring specialist intervention at the receiving hospital.