Ambulance trust spends £3.4m on taxis
Jul 8 2010
The Welsh Ambulance Services Trust has spent more than £3.4m on taxis in the past five years, blowing its own budget by almost £1m.
The trust paid out more than £517,507 on cabs in the last financial year alone to ferry non-emergency patients to their hospital appointments.
Opposition AMs said the money paid to private taxi firms could have been better spent on expanding the trust’s own vehicle fleet.
Last year’s taxi bill – £1,417 a day on average – was just £120,000 less than it spent buying 27 new ambulances and patient transport vehicles.
A Freedom of Information request submitted by the Western Mail revealed the costs.
It comes three months after the publication of a highly critical review that called for major improvements to non- emergency patient transport services in Wales. The review, undertaken by Win Griffiths, chairman of Abertawe Bro Morgannwg Health Board, said patients sometimes suffered inconvenient and uncomfortable long journeys.
According to the new figures, the trust spent £852,709 on taxis in 2005-06 – more than double its budget of £357,148.
Spending has steadily dropped but the taxi budget has continued to be exceeded in every year since.
Over the same period, the trust bought 534 vehicles at a cost of almost £30m, including 232 new vehicles in 2007-08.
Liberal Democrat health spokesman Peter Black, the AM for South Wales West, called for an urgent review of spending on taxis fares.
“I am obviously concerned that the Welsh Ambulance Service are not getting value for money out of their vehicles,” Mr Black said.
“They are using a very expensive form of transport [taxis], when if they invested in their own vehicles they would get better value for money.”
Andrew RT Davies, Shadow Minister for Health, said: “To hear there has been a million-pound overspend is of deep concern when valuable resources have to be protected. On the surface it seems a considerable sum of money and if there is already a service in place then I would suggest you should be using your own resources before you are spending it on third party operators.”
Dave Galligan, Unison head of health in Wales, said that in some instances it may be more economical to use taxis than to send a large eight- seater vehicle to pick up one person.
“While we might like to see the investment in staff rather than taxis, there will always be a need for taxis,” he said. “It will, in some instances, be cheaper to send a single patient home by black cab.”
An Assembly Government spokesman said it was a matter for the ambulance trust to ensure it used its resources efficiently and effectively.
He said: “We have invested more than £16m since 2006-07 in 211 new patient transport service vehicles, 198 new emergency ambulances and other specialist and rapid response vehicles to help improve performance. We are awaiting plans from the ambulance trust for more replacement vehicles.”
An spokesman for the ambulance trust said taxis represented 2.8% of the total direct cost of its patient care services. He added: “The trust’s transport service to and from hospital for non-emergency patients is provided throughout Wales by patient care services staff in specialist vehicles, by ambulance car volunteers and properly assessed and approved taxi firms.
“Taxis can be used to assist in covering out-of-hours clinics that operate outside our standard contractual hours and can also be booked by the trust on behalf of other hospital trusts. Specialist taxis can also be called upon to assist with transporting wheelchair patients.
“The trust is working to reduce non-emergency transport costs by recruiting more volunteer car drivers across Wales to assist in transporting mobile patients.”
Source; http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales ... -26808318/
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