FOLLOWING your article (“Outcry as cancer patients miss out on free transport to hospital”, The Herald, August 14) and subsequent letters (August 16), I am writing to provide clarity regarding patient transport service referrals to alternative transport providers.
As we outlined in our original statement, the Scottish Ambulance Service has a robust process in place to ensure patients get the safest and most appropriate form of transport based on their medical and mobility needs.
If we decide, following a patient needs assessment, that a patient requires additional support from skilled ambulance care assistants on their journey to or from hospital, we will not refer that patient to an alternative transport provider.
This is not a reflection on the level of care offered by other transport providers, but rather a case of the service adhering to strict clinical guidelines in the interests of patient care and patient safety.
If our patient needs assessment indicates that it is both safe and appropriate for a patient to travel with Lanarkshire Cancer Care Trust (LCCT), we would have no hesitation in making that referral. Indeed, we have made a number of referrals to LCCT in the last year.
We are arranging to meet with representatives from LCCT in the coming weeks to discuss their concerns, and we look forward to working together to deliver the highest possible level of patient-centred care throughout Lanarkshire.
Pauline Howie,
Chief Executive, Scottish Ambulance Service,
Gyle Square, 1 South Gyle Crescent, Edinburgh.
LIKE Elspeth Russell (Letters, August 16) I too was perturbed to read of the cancelled journeys by the Scottish Ambulance Service’s Patient Transport Service (PTS), but not surprised. Like her I have spoken to patients distressed by the early (and late) pick-ups, the trips “round the houses”, and the occasional abandonment of people left behind because if the crews waited they would be late back to their bases for the end of their shift.
My husband and I were volunteer drivers with the PTS for many years – a total of 27 years between us – until about two and a half years ago when it suddenly “changed its criteria” and cut back dramatically on its use of volunteers.
With that background, and hearing tales of patients either having their requests for PTS help in getting to hospital turned down, or waiting for hours for a PTS vehicle to arrive, knowing about charities out there providing a better solution such as Lanarkshire Cancer Care Trust, Ayrshire Cancer Care, Driving Force in Bonnybridge and Denny, LINK in Linlithgow and undoubtedly many others, I decided that we needed something similar for the Upper and Lower Braes area of Falkirk. Public transport from our small villages is extremely difficult, time-consuming and expensive getting to Falkirk itself, far less getting to the Beatson in Glasgow or to the Edinburgh Western General. And so, Meadowbank Car 4U came into being.
Meadowbank Car 4U is a registered charity and has for the last year been providing a free, friendly hospital transport service for cancer patients who are registered at Meadowbank Health Centre in Polmont, Falkirk. Our clients are referred to us by their GP practice. We have 33 volunteers from within our local community, all of them willing and able to help. We have no paid staff or office premises. Some of those volunteers have “been there, seen it, done it” with cancer treatments and provide a great source of hope, understanding and comfort to our clients.
The difference we make to patients having to travel 80 miles per day, five days a week for up to six or seven weeks of radiotherapy or for chemotherapy is much appreciated by our clients. They have a specified pick-up time, they know who their driver will be on each day and they know that the driver will wait for them or come back when their treatment is finished.
The side-effects of treatment experienced by cancer patients do not normally require the attention of a professional PTS crew to accompany them home and most would not meet the criteria for PTS anyway. They just need a comfortable seat, a friendly face and the knowledge that they are going straight home.
I feel that there is a role here for PTS, or the NHS, in co-ordinating and developing this abundance of goodwill of the many volunteers doing their bit and removing the postcode lottery of hospital transport services. The NHS should provide consistency in setting the standards of service, and the PTS could provide guidance and training to those existing charities and to any future ones.
Anne McDonald,
Chairwoman.
Meadowbank Car 4U, 6 Breadalbane Place, Polmont, Falkirk.
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