Allied health professionals’ contribution to the quality of care and service delivery

The independent organisation QualityWatch (which provides independent scrutiny concerning how the quality of health and social care is changing) has produced a report in partnership with the Nuffield Trust exploring the quality of care and the services that are delivered by allied health professionals (AHPs) (Dorning and Bardsley, 2014). The report focuses on and provides available data regarding how best the quality of care delivered by AHPs can be measured. There are some interesting comparative data in the report between the various professional AHP groups.

As a group of autonomous practitioners, AHPs work with a number of other professionals and also at many points along the care pathway. The report acknowledges that paramedics and other AHPs provide an integrated approach to care delivery; their roles usually depend on interfaces across care teams, as well as across sectors of care.

There were 19 955 paramedics registered with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) in 2013 (HCPC, 2014). The Allied Health Professions Federation (2013) describes the role of paramedics as ambulance service health professionals who provide urgent and emergency care to patients. They assess and treat patients before transferring or referring them to other services, as appropriate.