Staff shortage forced Merseyside’s ambulance service to spend £35,000 on taxis in just one month

Jul 9 2008 by Liza Williams, Liverpool Daily Post

MERSEYSIDE’S ambulance service spent £35,000 on taxis in just one month – because it did not have enough staff to man its own vehicles.

The staff shortages, combined with high numbers of patients, led to the spending on taxis in April, which is not budgeted for at all. The money was used by the service’s Patient Transport Service (PTS) within Merseyside because of unfilled vacancies and delays in treatment, as well as the high amount of people needing the service.

It transports non-emergency patients to and from hospital.

The Trust’s overall budget for the PTS for the whole year was £435,000, and the issue of overspending on taxis has now prompted the service to draw up a pilot scheme in order to combat the inefficiency. There is also an ongoing recruitment campaign to fill the vacancies within the PTS.

Taxis are not specifically budgeted for within the service, but a limited use of them is expected when other transport is not available.

A spokeswoman for NWAS said the use of taxis to convey patients to hospital was “due to a variety of reasons including volume of patients, unforeseen delays in treatment and vacancies in patient transport service”.

She said: “Recruitment campaigns to fill patient transport service vacancies are ongoing and these vacancies will produce budget savings which will in part offset the overspend. There are also plans to improve use of technology by piloting a satellite navigation system with the PTS.

“This would utilise the time the PTS loses in down-time while waiting for patients to undergo treatment before transporting them home again in out of area locations.

“PTS vehicles would be provided with sat navs to enable them to quickly locate addresses in order to transport discharges, transfer patients or other appropriate short journeys before returning to collect their scheduled return patients.

“Details of the pilot scheme have yet to be finalised, but the potential increase in productivity and reduction in taxi costs could be of considerable benefit to the Trust.”

Ray Carrick, the Ambulance Service Union’s assistant general secretary, says PTS staff often seek promotion to the emergency arm of NWAS, which can leave the department short- staffed.

He said: “There is a huge amount of recruitment going on now in the ambulance service, and it needs to make sure that PTS does not fall behind.

“We encourage the move for PTS staff into A&E or high dependency, it means they have learnt their trade so to speak and the move means more training and a higher salary.

“However, NWAS needs to keep replacing these people if they do move on.

“If the service is understaffed in a department then it will reduce the level of service we offer and they need to prevent this happening by keeping on top of recruitment.”

lizawilliams