Alternative Patient Transport Service

The Alternative Patient Transport service (APT) began in 2001 using the community use minibus for 3 x ½ days per week to take clients into local doctors’ surgeries. At that point that plan was to offer the 3 local medical clinics access to the bus a certain day per week. However, we did not take into consideration that people will not be ill on demand! The need for the service was there, however we were not able to satisfy demand because of the restrictions on availability of the bus etc.

In 2002 we purchased a 9 seat Renault Master minibus (affectionately nicknamed the Baby Bus) and were able to completely revamp the APT service. We began a 5 day a week door to door demand responsive service in the Buchan area in late 2002.

This service is extremely demand responsive and the route / details can change in a matter of minutes depending on the needs of the clients etc. This means that the driver has had to be extremely adaptable and good communication between him and the office is paramount.

Customers can access this service in several ways;

Self referral; as they need us they call and book the bus.
Medical personnel; the local doctors’ surgeries/ nurses/health visitors often ring us before they make the appointment with the client in order to be able to assure them that transport is available.

We also do a regular run for the local dialysis clinic, transporting patients to and from dialysis 3 days per week. These patients are not able to access the local clinics without transport being provided however the NEPTS cannot supply a service in this area. We work closely with both the clinic and the NEPTS on this project.
Scottish Ambulance’s Non Emergency Patient Transport service; Every Friday we send a fax to NEPTS telling them where our APT service will be working in the next week, if they need help and know that we are in the area, or that we have a “quiet” period, they will call and request some help. They only ask us to transport the patients that have a “socio-medical” need i.e. they don’t need medical help on the journey.

Social work and other agencies; we work closely with mental health groups / cardiac rehabilitation groups and social work to enable their customers to access their services. This can mean that we transport one person to an appointment, take a group of mental health clients for day trips or help a socially excluded person, who cannot use public transport or the Dial-a-Bus shopping service because they cannot interact with people, do their shopping once a week.

Other voluntary groups; some of our clients are already working with other voluntary groups such as the local carers/befrienders association / NSF etc. Transport is often a big problem for these groups and we are able to either provide individual transport to and from the specific meetings or a group use service either in Baby bus for a small group or the community use bus for a larger amount.

The APT project is unable to access the concessions system so a mileage charging system is in place.

All individual clients pay as per the following table;

Clients should be aware that if they are travelling to a hospital appointment and they are in receipt of

• Income Support
• Family Credit
• Pension Gaurantee

Satutory agencies pay a mileage rate of 0.45p per mile for the APT bus