However, once the contract is awarded there is no body which monitors the performance of these transport providers and horror stories abound. The London Ambulance Service itself only has a handful of the contracts in London and there are many providers. I have been involved over the last few years in fighting for a better and more disabled friendly service, particularly with hospitals such as Guy's & St Thomas Trust, where, when I was working for Transport for All, we discovered that they were refusing trips to patients with taxicards which was completely against the rationale why taxicards were given out in the first place, i.e. so that older and disabled people could go on shopping trips and to have some sort of social life and not for NHS trips. I have heard many stories about patient transport vehicles making patients wait for hours outside hospitals or expecting patients to be ready for collection in the early hours of the morning for an appointment which will only be hours later.
I totally support the list of demands below on standards for Patient Transport and I will be at the meeting of the Patients Forum on Monday next, February 8th 2010, 5.30-7.30pm Conference Room LAS Headquarters 220 Waterloo Road, London SE1 BSL signers will be available
Nearest Tube: Waterloo British Rail: Waterloo
Buses:1,4,26,77,68,168,171,172,176,188,507,243,341,381,507,521 to discuss this and to start a campaign for their implementation across London. It will also be a demand of my general election campaign.
PATIENTS’ FORUM
AMBULANCE SERVICES (LONDON)
Recommendations for changes to
PTS contracts in London
PATIENT TRANSPORT SERVICES (PTS)
Quality Standard for London’s Patient Transport Services (PTS) – Proposals for London’s commissioners and providers of PTS
1) Quality comes first – not price
• All commissioners of PTS services must put quality and safety before price.
• Service users must be involved and consulted in the drawing up of the tender specification.
• LINks, the Patients’ Forum, community groups with as special interest in PTS and services users, must be present during the process when providers make presentations to commissioners.
• There must be a minimum of two community representatives at each provider presentation to commissioners, one of whom is service user.
2) Patients Transport Vehicles
• PTS vehicles must be designed to ensure the safety and comfort of patients
• PTS vehicles must meet all safety criteria including safe mechanisms for door locking.
• PTS vehicles must be designed with surfaces that ensure and enable effective cleaning and sterilisation.
• PTS vehicles must always be clean inside and out and surfaces treated to ensure the highest standards of sterility.
3) Training of staff
• All PTS staff must be trained in infection prevention and control techniques and must be familiar with DH guidelines for the reuse of linen and cross-infection from uniforms.
• All PTS staff must be receive equality, diversity and disability inclusion Training.
• All PTS staff must receive training in lifting patients including specialised training to assist heavy patients.
4) Eligibility criteria
• Eligibility criteria must be clear and transparent.
• Service users must be involved and consulted in the drawing up of the eligibility criteria.
• Eligibility criteria must be published in a format that is accessible to patients, carers, GPs and acute sector provider staff, i.e. Easy Read, Large Print, Braille, on yellow paper, on DVD/cassette, different languages and proactively made available to them
• There must be an easily available appeals procedure which can be used by patients if the provider refuses to provide a PTS vehicle.
• Providers must not refuse patients a PTS because they have a taxi-card.
• Patients must not be refused PTS because they have their own transport, e.g. an adapted vehicle. A professional assessment must be carried out on each individual case.
5) Patients with disabilities
• All PTS vehicles must be clean and fit for purpose.
• PTS providers must ask patients or carers question about the patients impairment or special needs, i.e. wheelchair, guide dog, hearing dog or other hidden impairments.
• A wheelchair accessible ambulance must be sent when required and this provision must include powered wheelchairs.
• PTS providers must enquire whether patients have ‘patient specific protocols’ which require specific care in relation to the person’s clinical or impairment needs.
• PTS staff must be trained in dealing with vulnerable patients and provided in sufficient number to meet the needs of the patient/patients being carried.
• PTS staff must be responsive to patients’ personal hygiene needs during journeys.
• Commissioners must take account of the particular needs of patients with disabilities during any waits in hospital waiting areas.
6) Carers
• Requests by users for their carers to accompany them on PTS vehicles will not be unreasonable refused if the presence of the carer will significantly improve and support the users access to health services.
7) Access to the service
• A PTS specific telephone number for PTS control, should be available to all PTS users for booking transport, inquiring about the location of a PTS vehicle and other access enquiries.
• The PTS specific telephone number must be answered within a fixed number of rings by a person not a machine.
• The PTS specific telephone number response standard must be widely distributed with the telephone number and a text-phone number.
8) Communications
• Patients must be given a specific time for arrival for the PTS vehicle and immediately informed of any delays by the PTS crew, e.g. due to vehicle breakdown/traffic delays/incorrect form of transport allocated or other reasons.
• Information about any delay in collecting a patient must immediately be transmitted to the service provider to that clinic staff can make arrangement to see the patient on arrival.
• The practice of asking patients to be ready several hours before their appointment must stop.
• PTS crew must phone, text or email (as agreed in advance) the next patient to be collected after they have collected the previous patient, to inform the patient of the actual time of arrival.
• PTS providers must provide evidence of their ability to provide British Sign Language interpreters for access to the service whenever this is required.
9) Hospital Discharge
• PTS providers should be provided with the name and contact details of the discharge- coordinator for each discharged person they have been allocated to return to their home.
• Any delays due to poor discharge planning should be reported to the discharge coordinator.
10) Post-clinic collection/return to home address
• Patients must be collected for their return journey within one hour of the end of their clinic/investigation appointment.
• Patients must be returned to their home within two hours from the end of their clinic/investigation appointment.
• Patients must have access to staff and a telephone (at a suitable height for patients using wheelchairs) so they can confirm the time they will be collected after their appointment.
• Special account should be taken of the needs of patients with diabetes and other conditions that might be affected by delays.
• PTS providers must give an undertaking that vulnerable patients will be returned home as quickly as possible and not be subject to long, circulation journeys to reduce PTS costs.
11) Complaints procedure
• All PTS providers must ensure that there is a complaints procedure, that is well advertised and effective.
• All responses to complaints must be robust and address the actual complaint within a specified time.
• PTS providers must use data from complaints investigations to improve services. Details of improvements must be communicated to patients.
• Details of PTS complaints, recommendations from complaints and remedial action must be provided to local LINks and the Patients Forum.
12) Transfers between hospitals
• Carers must be notified immediately when a hospital transfer has been agreed.
• PTS providers must notify the patient and carer of the actual time that the patient will leave the first hospital and arrive at the second.
• PTS crew must make sure that the patient is appropriately dressed during their transfer.
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