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Now crisis hospital cuts transport costs

Vulnerable patients will have to make their own way

TWICE as many vulnerable patients will have to make their own way to and from the Royal Free Hospital after under-fire managers slashed its transport budget.
Chiefs at the hospital in, Pond Street, Hampstead, say they pay contractors Parkwood twice as much for cabs and minibuses for patients as other major London teaching hospitals and have ordered staff to help them slash the £2.5 million annual bill.
The crisis-hit hospital has already imposed a hiring freeze, removed 100 beds and closed wards in an attempt to reduce a £10.5 million deficit.
Chaos in the hospital’s corridors of power means “there have been many embarrassing occasions when transport has turned up to collect a deceased patient”, the hospital’s director of support services, Debbie Green, wrote in a memo to staff obtained by the New Journal.
She added: “We cannot accept that a patient is eligible for patient transport just because the GP referral stipulates transport.
“GP transport requests need to be verified to ensure compliance with Royal Free Hospital criteria prior to or after the first visit.”
She warned that poor patients should not be given priority for lifts and that MRSA patients did not require “exclusive use of a vehicle”, insisting transport would only be provided according to medical need.
Patients’ forum chairman Arthur Brill said: “There have been problems with patients being taken to the north of England by ambulance unnecessarily so. Given the problems the trust is facing, this move was probably sensible.”
The cuts came as it was confirmed that city management guru Sir Jerry Robinson would be brought in to give advice to Royal Free managers for two days a week for six months as part of a BBC documentary.
Sir Jerry’s involvement is understood to have been held up while he led a takeover bid for ratcatching firm Rentokil.
But the bid failed late last week, removing the main obstacle to filming.
Former Health Secretary and Holborn and St Pancras MP Frank Dobson warned hospital chiefs to be wary of the project.
He said: “You have to ask yourself: what’s in it for the film-makers, and what’s in it for you?
“There’s usually rather more there for the programme makers.”
But series producer Kelly Webb-Lamb said: “I think that’s a very sad, cynical attitude.
“Jerry has done so much for the businesses he’s been involved with in previous shows.”



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