NHS spends £80m on private ambulances a year, data shows

[Northerner]

The NHS is spending almost £80m a year hiring private ambulances to answer 999 calls and take patients to hospital for appointments, new figures show.

Widespread shortages of paramedics and rising demand forced England’s 10 NHS ambulance trusts to spend £78.4m in 2016-17 on help from non-NHS providers to supplement their own services. That was down on the £79.7m trusts spent in 2015-16, but 22% more than their £64.2m outlay in 2014-15, according to data obtained by the Press Association under freedom of information laws.

South Central ambulance service spent the most on private services last year – £16.3m, up from its £13.6m outlay the year before and £12.3m in 2014-15.

https://www.theguardian.com/society...s-80m-on-private-ambulances-a-year-data-shows

 

[mikeyB]

I guess the current government is quite relaxed about this, it's a prime element of the NHS that could be farmed out to a private contractor. In their eyes, anyway.

 

[Copepod]

I'd be interested to know the types of journeys and vehicles involved eg how many were minibus type for taking patients to / from outpatients appointments; how many were specialist large / strong vehicles for seriouslt obese patients? Some regular ambulances and trolleys have limits of 100 / 120kg.

 

[Mark Parrott]

Having worked in the Patient Transport Service, I could see first hand how badly managed it was & the way they wasted money. I was only a volunteer, but they would send other volunteer drivers from miles away to pick up a patient that lived round the corner from me! Also, quite often the PTS ambulances only had 1 patient on board when they are designed to carry many more. The staff in the control room who planned the PTS work even admitted to not knowing the local area. It really ended up becoming a shambles, so I left. And they were using private ambulances despite the fact their own ambulances were half empty. It also got much harder for people to get transport, which I can understand why they did that, but they were refusing patients that were too ill to travel on public transport & they also put a stop to escorts too.