About our Patient Transport Service
We are proud to operate seven non-emergency patient transport service contracts within the West Midlands and Cheshire to ensure patients get to and from their hospital appointments. As well as covering the region, our crews can end up in any part of the UK, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. As a Service we have vast experience of running PTS operations and successfully meeting our key performance indicators (KPIs) by being able to show that we can cater for each individual patient’s needs.
Our PTS staff book and transport eligible patients to hospital appointments, transfer between hospital sites, deal with routine admissions, discharges and provide transport for patients undergoing continuing treatments such as renal dialysis and oncology. We also provide journeys for patients with more complex medical needs including those who are bariatric, high dependency and at the end of life. We take bookings based on the criteria set by our commissioners.
Our staff
We employ around 900 highly experienced and dedicated PTS staff across our contracts who deal with just under 1 million patient journeys every single year clocking up more than 6 million miles!
Our PTS staff work operationally from 11 bases and four control rooms. Every patient journey we provide is booked and co-ordinated by our dedicated control room staff who are based in our Stafford, Coventry, Warrington and Frankley control rooms.
To ensure our operational staff can cater for our patients’ individual needs, they are well trained in basic first aid, manual handling, infection prevention and control and driving as well as specialist bariatric training for many staff too. We ensure they have the right equipment to provide the highest quality service to our patients.
Our fleet
Amongst our 350-strong fleet of PTS vehicles we have cars with wheelchair capacity, ambulance vehicles which can either provide multiple seating or be adapted to allow wheelchair access. The Trust also has a considerable number of ambulance vehicles with stretcher and bariatric capacity too. Our wheelchair-users may be able to travel in their chair, although where possible they will be transferred to a seat for the journey. Some journeys are completed by selected taxi companies or volunteer drivers.
You can find out what areas we cover, how to see if you’re eligible and most importantly how to book a journey with us on the following pages.