Non Emergency
Patient Transport Service
Our non-emergency Patient Transport Service (PTS) crews take patients to and from routine hospital appointments, many of them are also trained to respond to potentially life-threatening emergencies, such as cardiac arrests. Every year they undertake about 1.1 million patient journeys to and from hospitals, treatment centres and other health related facilities. The patients transported need our services either because they have no transport of their own or they need specialist care en route to their hospital or treatment centre.
PTS operate in a range of vehicles, from a standard car, through multi-purpose vehicles capable of carrying several passengers, including those that are in wheelchairs, or must be conveyed on a stretcher, to specialist urgent care ambulances for more seriously ill patients.
These staff are a vital part of our service. The majority of our PTS staff are Ambulance Transport Assistants, sometimes referred to as Ambulance Care Assistants. As new entrants they receive a robust four week training course that includes basic life support, manual handling, defibrillation, patient assessment, dealing with patients that have dementia, driving skills, and how to deal with a patient in an emergency situation. All these skills are underwritten by formal training processes and are accredited by BTEC.
Where additional skills are required there are also a number of Emergency Medical Technicians employed within PTS. They are fully trained to 999 standards and have most of the same skills and training as paramedics. Their role is to support PTS in the transfer of seriously ill patients between hospitals and to specialist centres of excellence.
The service is complemented by the volunteers who work for the ambulance car service. On a daily basis these volunteers take many patients (whose conditions allow them to sit in a car) to various hospitals and treatment centres across the region and further afield.
We have Liaison Offices in all of the region's major hospitals where our staff are the public face of the PTS division. They also deal with bookings and queries, but also with any problems that occur on the day such as late arrivals, changes in patient appointments, and most importantly that every patient is conveyed so that they get the treatment they need..
The PTS services is accredited to ISO9001:2008 standards, which is externally audited to ensure that the process that go behind the activities are efficient, effective, safe and fit for purpose.
