£10m spent on taxis by North West Ambulance Service (From The Westmorland Gazette)
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£10m spent on taxis by North West Ambulance Service
4:57pm Friday 21st October 2011 in Health
HEALTH chiefs have defended their decision to spend almost £10m on more than 500,000 taxi journeys for patients.
It has emerged that the North West Ambulance Service has spent the most on taxis nationally – £9.9m since April 2008. But bosses at the trust said it was in the process of reducing its reliance on them.
The information was released by trusts across the country after a Freedom of Information request.
Nationally more than £30m has been spent on taxis for NHS patients since 2008 because of a shortage of official non-emergency transport.
The figures cover the transfer of patients who are too ill to travel by themselves, such as those with broken limbs or receiving chemotherapy.
Ambulance trusts in England, Wales and Northern Ireland responded to the request for information.
Delwyn Wray, director of patient transport service at NWAS, said: “To enable the trust to deliver a timely and responsive service, particularly in surges of demand, there are times when it is necessary to use third party transport providers to supplement the fleet.
“This year the patient transport service is undergoing a modernisation programme in conjunction with new national eligibility criteria, set by commissioners, which ensures that only those with a genuine medical need can access the service.”
Taxis were used for less than 6 per cent of patient transport journeys in the first part of this year, compared with almost 10 per cent in 2010.
Comments(4)
Pendlesider
says...
11:29am Sat 22 Oct 11
life cycle too
says...
2:42am Mon 24 Oct 11
In 1997 my then baby son was taken by taxis from Lancaster's RLI to Manchester children's Hospital.
I accompanied a trained nurse, so as to be able to sign a consent form for a possible operation to save his sight.
Drops had to be administered 30 and 15 minutes before arrival in Manchester, and this was done on the back seat.
HAD we travelled by Ambulance, there would have been a fully kitted out ambulance, two ambulance staff, in addition to the nurse, missing from their post in Lancaster.
The taxi, which was on contract rate to the health authority was a cheaper option, as the equipment in the ambulance was not required. The journey was also a great deal more comfortable than it would have been in the back of an ambulance.
For this reason, I urge you to obtain more information before we write this off as an avoidable expense.
gadgetgadget
says...
9:36am Mon 24 Oct 11
Some of their previous time was spent taking patients back from say Lancaster to WGH or vice versa when they were not required on an emergency - I have personal experience of that prior to the changes that were made at A&E. That helped avoiding using other hospital transport and taxis.
It's perfectly logical that if the ambulances are having to spend more time on the road dealing with taking emergencies 20-30 miles out of their way then other transport is going to be required for other purposes i.e. it's relatively simple logistics.
The problem also becomes also environmental too - more taxis = more emissions ! Which is BTW a breach of the NHS Code of Practice !
gadgetgadget says...
5:49pm Fri 21 Oct 11
UHMBT and the Ambulance Trust knew this was likely to happen many, many months ago - now the price is obvious.