THE creation of a six-county ambulance service for the East of England has been welcomed by the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Ambulance Service. Chief executive Will Hancock said the new service announced yesterday (Wednesday) by Health Secretary Patrici

THE creation of a six-county ambulance service for the East of England has been welcomed by the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Ambulance Service.

Chief executive Will Hancock said the new service announced yesterday (Wednesday) by Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt provides a real opportunity for improvements in patient care.

For Beds and Herts it means forming a new organisation with the East Anglian Ambulance Service and Essex Ambulance Service.

Mr Hancock said: "In recent years we have seen radical changes to the way in which ambulance services deliver healthcare and the new organisation will allow this to continue and expand.

"With so many changes to where and how treatment is delivered across the NHS, it is quite timely that we will now have this opportunity to undertake a fairly substantial rethink of how we operate.

- Plans for new NHS primary care trusts were also announced yesterday by the Department of Health.

The Royston, Buntingford and Bishop's Stortford NHS Primary Care Trust will be merged into the new North and East Herts trust from October.