Disruption to NEAS patient transport services
Transport for patients requiring essential treatment will still be provided as a priority and the Trust will continue to support patient discharges across all north east acute hospitals.
The remaining patient bookings will be accommodated as far as possible with the resources available but some may experience disruption or even cancellation as a result of employee absences from Covid.
The patient transport service will prioritise transport patients who include or require:
- routine essential outpatient transport (e.g. dialysis, oncology, radiology, urology)
- same day discharge transport
- same day admission transport
- some pre-planned admissions, discharges and transfers
Prioritising scheduled patient transport services in this way will continue to help to improve hospital patient flow through the region’s hospitals to free up hospital beds, reduce queues within the hospital and emergency departments. It will also ensure that those patients with life threatening conditions, who are unable to access alternative transport, experience no disruption to their care.
The service is working closely with acute trusts and contacting patients to explore alternative means for them to get to appointments if necessary, where safe and possible to do so, or to cancel transport pending a future rescheduled booking.
NEAS will continue to review the situation on a daily basis with a view to returning to normal service as soon as possible.
They apologise for any inconvenience caused.
