The 1st of March, it's really a year on from... this, so here is a look back at Secure Solutions Group over the last year and what's next. We're titling this '2020: Our best worst year ever.'.
Somehow, we've managed to come out of 2020 and started 2021 not only intact but with a better, bigger service and a brighter future than ever before. Let's look back and get excited for what's to come for Spring 2021 and beyond!
In January 2020, we were a microbusiness, supplying a small handful of response cars to a small handful of NHS Trusts and working on the NHS Blood and Transplant framework, collecting and delivering medical staff and supplies. We also provided a small handful of ambulance staffing to hospitals and ambulance services mainly in support of winter pressures. We were a medical support service, not an ambulance service.
Just a month after in, February 2020 would see a drastic change to our service and see us step up for what will be a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic that has, for now, changed our lives completely. It started with a call to provide our staff to an NHS Trust, moving COVID-19 positive patients. We started with manning just 2 ambulances, across 8 staff across. In addition to the increase across our other activities, for our small service, this increased our workload quite literally tenfold.
Within a matter of weeks of starting, we were asked to increase the staffing across 5 ambulances with 18 staff, 12 hours a day, 7 days a week across Yorkshire for COVID-19 relief. Within months we needed to source our own vehicles and grow our fleet of 4 RRV's, to a fleet of 10 various vehicles including ambulance trucks. Born was our new brand, from Secure Solutions Group Limited to SSGL Medical, which now appears on our fully owned fleet of vehicles.
From February 2020 to February 2021 we moved an incredible 14,560 patients, which is an average of 8 patients a day on each vehicle. This would have been IMPOSSIBLE without dedicated staff who truly stepped up for the NHS.
We are incredibly proud of this achievement and exceptionally grateful to our staff for moving almost 15,000 patients, which just a year and a month ago, we wouldn't have imagined in our wildest dreams. To those who have worked thousands upon thousands of hours in support of others - thank you.
This, from the management side of things, has been the biggest and most exciting challenge we have ever engaged in. But in doing so, we have created a reliable and rapidly growing service that can deliver exceptional value for the NHS, with exceptional patient care from an incredibly passionate team.
So what next? We have some incredibly exciting news, from brand spanking new vehicles (we're talking 21 plates!) to accreditations and national awards. We're also embarking on brand new frameworks that we've been successful in joining and will shortly be able to share. We will be sharing all of this over the coming weeks and months, and promise to keep you updated every step of the way.
Can we also finish up by saying a huge thank you to YOU too - our supporters, you motivate all of us from the staff on the ground, to the managers and directors. We're talking here, to those who have liked our page and posts, commented inspirational messages, supported us by applying for jobs, and of course those who work in those jobs too.
Have a fantastic March 2021 ahead, the good times are coming. Stay strong.