Other official information and services: www.belgium.be  belgium

Federal health inspector

The federal health inspector acts as the local representative of the FPS HFCSE for emergency medical assistance. He/she is in direct contact with the governor, the mayor, the health professionals and the citizens. The federal inspector is assisted by an expert incident and crisis manager (ICM), a psychosocial manager (PSM) and a 112 medical directorate team. This team consists of a medical director, a deputy medical director and nurse regulators (see ‘Organisation’ section). Together, they form a ‘Federal Health Inspectorate Cluster’. The clusters are tasked with the following:

  • supervising the proper organisation of ‘Emergency Medical Assistance’, whereby the quality of the activities is checked;
  • coordinating the medical component of emergency and intervention plans at a provincial and municipal level;
  • local implementation of federal disaster plans (nuclear plan, health plan, heat wave plan, etc.)

To find out more about the work of federal health inspectors: www.health.belgium.be

AMBUREG

AMBUREG is a compulsory record of data concerning the interventions of all recognised ambulances in Belgium. This record includes various data concerning each intervention for which an ambulance team from a recognised ambulance service was dispatched. This record has been mandatory since January 2019 and is regulated by the Royal Decree of 14 December 2018.

AMBUREG’s aim is to improve the functioning of emergency medical assistance and to contribute to the management of the healthcare system.

To find out more about AMBUREG: www.health.belgium.be

Service Level Agreement

Within the scientific literature on Emergency Medicine, numerous indicators have already been determined for measuring the quality of emergency assistance. The NRDGH/CNSMU determined a Service Level Agreement (SLA) on this basis. This is an agreement between the federal government and the ambulance services, whereby performance indicators and quality requirements are agreed upon. After all, various conditions require a quick response. For this reason, it was agreed in the relevant SLA that a timespan of fifteen minutes between a call to 112 and the arrival of an ambulance team at the scene should be guaranteed, on average, in 90% of cases.

The introduction of AMBUREG recording enables the monitoring of ambulance activity and response times, which makes it possible to check whether the SLA is being complied with in Belgium.