Non Emergency Patient Transport Report 2017, Sussex

Healthwatch in Brighton and Hove, East and West Sussex visited health services in Bexhill, Brighton and Hove, Crawley, Eastbourne, Hastings, Haywards Heath, Polegate and Worthing over three weeks in May to June 2017, to assess the non-emergency Patient Transport Service.

This service was provided by South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SCAS) since April 2017.

The previous service was not satisfactory and Healthwatch wanted to know if the sevice had improved since the change of provider.

Overall, patients who answered the survey were satisfied with the service. 218 surveys were completed in total.

There were several areas that local Healthwatch would recommend the provider, SCAS and the CCG commissioners seek to address as a priority to ensure patients continue to receive a quality service:

Local Healthwatch to undertake visits to the provider’s contact centre before the second wave of this activity in December 2017.

The Trust should ensure any allied staff responsible for arranging patient transport have received training to use their online systems. The Trust should review its contact centre protocols for ensuring all calls are responded too in a timely manner.

The Trust should explore how it can make better use of local information when planning patient journeys, including better training for staff despatching vehicles; and

For frequent users of the service, strive to provide greater consistency in ‘pick up times’ and staff.

The provider of the service responded to this report in a positive manner stating they woulf continue to work closely with Healthwatch in the future.