"Patient Transport to hospital out of area"

This story has been posted by Healthwatch Tameside on behalf of a member of the public. We have their details and will forward any comments to them. They said…

A member of the public come into Healthwatch Tameside (HWT) office.  She was in a distressed state and wanted help to make arrangements for transport to attend a hospital appointment the following day.  The hospital is 15 miles away. She had attended a pre-op appointment last week  and doctors decided that they wanted another ‘test’ carrying out before the date for a planned operation early next week.  This lady received the letter informing her of the date for the test appointment two days previously.   The appointment was for the next day.

She had tried everything to get to the appointment under her own steam, but no-one was available to take her.  She came in to the Healthwatch office to try to get some help.  Her GP had given her the phone number of Patient Transport, she had tried to get through on the number but had been unable to.  HWT rang the number and did get through.  We were told that as the appointment was the following day they could not book transport as they needed 24 hours notice. 

There were various suggestions that may help, numbers of the voluntary transport schemes etc.  and the number of NWAS booking centre was given and the call transferred through to that number.  HWT explained the situation and the person asked for the time of the appointment.  This was 3:40 p.m. This person then said that as it was in the afternoon the journey could be booked on the original number.  We ended the call and HWT rang the booking line again.  This time received a recorded message to say that the service was closed as it was after 4:00 p.m.  HWT rang the NWAS booking centre again.  After listening to the scenario this person agreed to help.  We went through the booking criteria with the person, which took a little while, but everything was booked. This person was so relieved because of course she did not want to miss this appointment for the ‘test’ as it would have meant that the operation would need to be postponed.

The patient called back in to the HWT office a few days later, with surgery due the following day. They had been expecting to go in the night before surgery, but had been sent a letter requesting attendance at Wythenshawe at 7.30am. They had tried contacting NWAS, but transport could not be provided before 8am, for insurance reasons. They rang the hospital whilst at HWT, who confirmed they were first on the list for surgery. The only option was to move to the end of the list, which they did not want to do, as they were likely to be cancelled if previous surgery over-ran. They ended up booking a taxi at a cost of £25.They want to know why people who need to use patient transport are being asked to attend the hospital before the patient transport service is available? Could changes be made to the patient transport service?