If you run a large crowd event, sporting event or festival at the moment you are probably facing difficult decisions on what to put in place.

The Purple Guide is pretty clear about ensuring events do not impact on local services and the NHS are keen to enforce this through SAG meetings with local authorities. The ambulance service is already under extreme pressure and wait times are at the worst they have been for sometime.

Consider this - you are running a small festival you usually have a few first aiders or an ambulance on site. An accident occurs. You are in a difficult position, you can afford for your ‘site ambulance’ to leave site as it would leave you with no protection should anything happen but you know even for a heart attack, wait times can be up to 14 hours.

If you operate medical cover with a few ambulances there’s a chance that if one leaves it will join the ambulance queue outside A&E for a few hours. It’s pot luck whether its an hour or 6 hours.

With increasing litigation and everyone looking to blame someone, particularly in the events sector its more important to ensure you maximise what you can offer on site and consider what offsite transporting resources might be required. Having a health care professional such as a Paramedic on site is essential but if a person is sick you are stuck deciding whether they stay or go to hospital.

Depending on the size of your event the only answer really is to have a team dedicated for looking after people on site and additional resources for conveying to hospital. Increasing to Doctor-led care from a reputable provider can be helpful as well. That said though a Doctor without the right tools is like a plumber without a spanner. Additional skills available such as wider ranges or medications, prescribing, suturing and wound closure can all help ensure problems are solved easily and efficiently. Some providers may also even offer onsite point of care blood testing reducing the need to send someone to hospital for just a blood test.

There are a few important things to look for in a provider when choosing the right supplier for your event or festival. First and foremost they need to be CQC regulated. This costs the provider a lot of money which will likely mean their costs is slightly dearer, but do not be fooled by a cheap quote even if it includes a Paramedic and an Ambulance. Some unregulated providers will supply a ‘site ambulance’ which they might imply can take people to hospital, but without a CQC registration it is illegal to do so.

Secondly, you need a provider who is experienced in delivering event medical cover in a setting like yours. Providing first aid at a school fete is very different to setting up a field hospital for thousands of people. Medical and Security are two of the biggest risks for licensing restrictions.

Finally, care before and after the event is vital. Your provider should be supplying a detailed medical plan which should be available to submit to the authorities in good time prior to your event, they should be liaising with local services and then after the event they should be reporting incident types and numbers.

If you are looking at changing event medical provider, there’s a few things which are important to have to hand:

• Details of the previous cover - was it sufficient, was the NHS utilised?

• Details of the event, its capacity and timings - it might be on a 3 day event capacity fluctuates and your budget will go further when medical cover is flexed according to capacity and other factors such alcohol times.

If you would like to discuss your event, completely without obligation to use MET Medical, then please get in touch. Our events team will be happy to give advice and support.