Patient Transport

Patient Transport Service Information

Added: 15 January 2009 | Updated: 18 March 2009

The Patient Transport Service is responsible for transporting people to and from hospital appointments. Currently individual NHS Trust hospitals contract a service provider to supply Patient Transport to their patients for a five year period.

The London Ambulance Service, which used to supply the service for most London hospitals, now provides only around a third of London’s services. Other contracts are held by private companies, including minicab firms and organisations such as the St John’s Ambulance Service.

Regrettably, no central and unified system exists for the administration of non-emergency patient transport services.
Each NHS Trust has its own procedure for arranging transport. Most require either your GP or Hospital doctor to authorise the booking of transport, however, others such as Barts and the London NHS Trust for example, run their own booking schemes.

The best advice is to mention to your GP at the time of your referral that you might need transport to and from hospital. If you are already a hospital patient then check with your hospital doctor how you go about arranging transport.
Be aware though that, at present, patient transport tends to involve long waits, and there is clear evidence that some disabled people use Taxicard for hospital journeys because they find the Patient Transport Service unreliable.

Further information

Download the notes from the Patient Transport Listening Event from 2007

Watch a video of ITV’s London Tonight coverage of a Transport for All protest outside a London Hospital