As well as dealing with ‘999’ emergency calls, West Midlands Ambulance Service plays a key role in getting thousands of patients to and from their out-patient appointments and take people home from hospital. We complete in the region of one million non-emergency Patient Transport Service (PTS) journeys each year.
We have contracts in Birmingham, Black Country, Coventry & Warwickshire as well as throughout Cheshire and Wirral. To check whether you’re eligible for transport, to make a booking or for general enquiries please click here.
The Trust employs nearly 900 PTS staff using more than 350 vehicles to get patients to and from their hospital appointments throughout the region and beyond, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The journeys are booked and co-ordinated by dedicated control rooms based in Stafford, Coventry, Brierley Hill, Warrington and Frankley.
WMAS has a vast experience of running PTS operations and has successfully met all Key Performance Indicators by being able to show that we can cater for individual patient needs. One of the key areas for us is to ensure our staff are well trained and that they have the right equipment to provide the highest quality service to our patients.
PTS staff are fully trained in basic first aid; manual handling; infection prevention and control; and driving. Many staff receive specialist bariatric training.
Amongst the fleet we use, we have cars with a 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.
The eligibility criteria for using this service is set by each individual hospital or Clinical Commissioning Group, based on Department of Health guidance. Patients will be asked to answer a series of questions when requesting transport regarding their general day-to-day life in order to determine eligibility and to ensure the correct vehicle and crew are allocated. More information about each contract is available here.