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A specialist team is being set up to deal with patients with "complex moving needs", the North East Ambulance Service (NEAS) has said.

Staff will be trained to work on two specially-adapted vehicles which will respond to obese patients and those who have fallen in hard-to-reach areas.

In such cases, the fire service is often called upon to assist.

The NEAS said the Evacuation Team is expected to support 1,000 patients during the £350,000 year-long pilot.

As well as being dispatched to support frontline operational crews with live incidents, it will also provide risk assessments for pre-planned admissions, transfers or discharges. It is hoped it will reduce calls to the fire service.

Gareth Campbell, from NEAS, said: "All of our emergency ambulances are equipped and capable of extracting and carrying patients.

"But more challenging situations - such as an elderly patient who has fallen in a confined space, such as a bathroom or down the side of their bed, or a bariatric [obese] patient - can take longer for us to deal with, potentially delaying treatment and extending the time we are on scene.

"We hope the team, trained to deal with any complex moving incident, will provide a better patient experience and support our frontline crews, not just by providing additional support on scene but by speeding up the process so they can be back out responding to other patients."

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