National recognition for day patient bus service

An innovative new transport service for day patients using a Heywood health centre has earned national recognition.

The Callaghan House Pilot, developed by Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) and NHS Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale (NHS HMR), has been highly commended in the UK Bus Awards, under the Claudia Flanders Memorial Award for accessibility.

Callaghan House is a community health venue in Heywood, which provides physiotherapy and rehabilitative care relating to lung and heart disease and hearing, mainly through class sessions.

Once patients have been assessed, they are placed within a class and, if they meet set criteria, are placed on a list to receive ambulance transport, which is provided at a cost to NHS HMR.

By working with TfGM to pilot a new, dedicated transport service, NHS HMR has so far been able to achieve efficiencies on its transport costs, reduce the number of missed appointments caused by transport issues and significantly improve the service provided to day patients.

Councillor Mark Aldred, Chairman of the TfGM Committee’s Bus Network and TfGM Services Sub-Committee, said: “I’m delighted that this publicly-funded project has been singled out for recognition at a national level.

“What we’ve achieved is more for less, a more reliable, customer-focused and responsive service that is also more cost-effective. But we’ve also helped patients to keep important medical appointments, with the added bonus of saving the cost of rescheduling.

“It is a fantastic example of what we can achieve when we work closely with our public sector partners and I’d like to congratulate everyone involved in making it such a success.”

Dan Cassell, Urgent Care Commissioning Manager at NHS HMR, said: “It has been a pleasure working with community transport providers on this project; it has been a really well received service.”

Prior to the pilot, the service used ambulances and operated on a longer pick-up window so, in practice, patients could have to be ready by 7.00am for a journey scheduled for 9.00am.

Patients often had no direct point of contact to check on their booking, so appointments could potentially be missed.

If an appointment was missed, NHS HMR would still have to pay for the ambulance journey booked and also meet the additional cost of extending or rearranging the class for the missed appointment.

In order to provide a more focused, cost-effective service, TfGM has, since September 2010, been working with NHS HMR to commission the Callaghan House pilot, a dedicated service for day patients who are unlikely to have a medical need for transport.

This service, tailored to the demands of the venue and clients, provides a confirmed pick-up time, access to the service with only two hours’ advance notice required, and return services booked as classes finish.

In addition, the pick-up window is only 15 minutes, and patients and health care staff also have a single point of direct contact with the service provider, which helps them to check on the status of bookings close to pick-up times.

In 12 months, the service has achieved financial efficiencies for NHS HMR. In addition, the rate of missed appointments caused by transport issues has fallen by 36 per cent and the target has now been set to achieve no missed appointments, which has improved the quality of the experience for patients.

The pilot is expected to lead to a long-term contract, funded by the NHS HMR, being put in place.