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Patient First, NSL’s ambulance operation, has expanded its service for Hereford County Hospital NHS Trust to help the hospital cope with increasing pressure on bed space.

The new expansion comes in the form of a late shift designed to help the hospital get more patients home quickly once they have finished treatment.

It is particularly focussed on helping discharge patients from Accident and Emergency. Because Hereford covers a wide, rural area, journeys home from the hospital can be more difficult for patients, so non-emergency ambulance services such as that offered by Patient First are increasingly important for many discharged patients.

Wayne Spedding, Patient First’s chief ambulance officer, commented: “The hospital’s occupancy rate is running at high levels - which means they have huge pressure on their beds. We have run a service for Hereford for a year, but we were not contracted to run a shift at night.

“We were able to provide cover on an ad hoc basis, but the client’s costs were much higher under that arrangement so we proposed a new late shift, running from 1.30 to 9.30pm. It went live on Monday and is going well.” Two new ambulance drivers and a vehicle have been deployed to assist with the new shift, bringing the total on the Hereford team to 15.

The new service is proving much more cost-effective for the client, he added. “We have minimal set up costs because it is an extension to a service we are already providing – so we are able to help the client in a very cost-effective manner; something which all companies supplying services to the public sector need to be able to do.”

Wayne added that the service covers patients travelling from the hospital to Herefordshire, Gloucestershire and South and Mid Wales.

“It is important to be flexible – the NHS has constantly shifting demands on its resources so as a contractor supplying a service to them we have to be able to respond quickly to changing requirements.”

Patient First, based in Hereford and Shrewsbury, employs more than 170 people, and provides non-emergency patient transport and associated services to NHS and local authorities countrywide, including Birmingham Women's Hospital, Shropshire and Herefordshire NHS Trusts.

NSL is the UK’s leading supplier on parking management services, and also delivers a range of other outsourced services including business process outsourcing, passenger transport and street design consultancy.

For further information contact Tim Cowen on 020 8991 7709

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