Exclusive: Ambulance service spends £1.7m hiring private vehicles

Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust spent £1,739,131 on private ambulances between March 2012 and February this year.

Beverley and Holderness MP Graham Stuart, who obtained the figures through a freedom of information request, has now written to the trust to find out why private ambulances are used so extensively.

The Conservative MP said: “I have nothing in principle against the use of private ambulances if it offers greater flexibility and helps the Yorkshire Ambulance Service respond to the pressure of providing a fast and reliable service, especially in rural areas.

“I have written back to the ambulance service to investigate how the cost of using private ambulances compares to the use of regular ambulances, when and why a private ambulance is used and how service is assessed. This will enable the public to better understand why private ambulances are used and the effect this has on budgets and service quality.”

A total of 11 private providers were used by the service, the figures show, with one, Medical Europe Ltd, providing vehicles every month at a combined cost of £650,097. In January alone, it was paid £241,044.

St John Ambulance vehicles were used in eight months of the year at a total cost of £287,532, while Doncaster Community Transport was paid £267,138 for providing ambulances during eight consecutive months.

British Red Cross Society was employed during four months for a total of £11,409, the lowest fee paid to any of the providers.

A spokeswoman for the trust said: “We are committed to providing responsive and high-quality care to people in Yorkshire and the majority of private ambulance provision over the last two years has been for our non-emergency Patient Transport Service.

“As a professional ambulance service we would always prefer to respond to patients and transport them using our own staff and vehicles.

“However, when demand for our services is particularly high, our own resources can be complemented by St John Ambulance, British Red Cross and private ambulance service providers. This is common practice amongst ambulance services throughout the country and we value their contribution in helping us to continue to provide a responsive and safe service for patients.

“Safeguards and operating standards are in place to ensure that the use of private ambulance services does not compromise patient safety and the organisations we work with are all registered with the Care Quality Commission, the independent regulator of all health and social care services in England.”

Mr Stuart has been campaigning to improve emergency ambulance response times in his constituency. He said response times had improved over the last six months, with a two per cent increase in the number of emergency calls being met within the eight-minute benchmark, although he still has concerns.

He added: “One of the greatest problems is that crews are being delayed handing patients over at hospital. This unacceptable delay forces the ambulance service to spread their resources thinly whilst crews are held up.

“Since the introduction of the new GPs’ contracts by the Labour government many doctors’ surgeries have opted out of out-of-hours care; this has seen a huge rise in the number of people who are attending accident and emergency units across the country. The service is now struggling to cope under the immense pressure.”

The service has about 500 emergency vehicles in its fleet. It covers almost 6,000 square miles of varied terrain and provides 24-hour emergency and healthcare services to more than five million people.

It receives an average of 2,050 emergency and urgent calls per day and employs over 4,300 staff, the trust said.