East Midlands Ambulance Service extends non-emergency transport contract in Northamptonshire until 2025

A contract for non-emergency patient transport services (PTS) has been extended in Northamptonshire until 2025.

East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) has been providing patient transport to residents registered to a GP who need help getting to and from appointments since late 2019 after Thames Ambulance Group walked out of its contract early.

The services have been a lifeline for many, especially during the pandemic, and those services have now been extended and secured for a further four years.

EMAS has also invested more into the services in Northamptonshire for the coming years as new vehicles have been added to the fleet.

A spokesperson for the ambulance service said: “We are delighted to announce that we will be continuing to provide non-emergency Patient Transport Services (PTS) in Northamptonshire and Derbyshire beyond the end date of the current contracts.

“Our commissioners (the NHS organisations which pay for the services) have agreed that EMAS will continue to provide non-emergency PTS in Northamptonshire until March 2025.

“The finer details of these contracts are still being finalised, but the commitment has been made that EMAS will continue to be the PTS provider in these areas.

“The Northamptonshire contract includes the provision of brand new vehicles for our PTS colleagues across the division as many of the vehicles they are using are coming to the end of their working lives.

“Many of these new vehicles are currently being built or are already at our fleet workshop in Alfreton being kitted out, and the very first two new PTS ambulances have been delivered to the PTS station at Brackmills Industrial Estate in Northampton, ready to be used for our patients.

“There are 27 new vehicles being rolled out in this batch - 14 stretcher vehicles and 13 seated ones.

“Thank you to everyone who continues to be involved in these contract negotiations, and to our fleet team for preparing the new vehicles as they arrive so they are ready for our frontline PTS colleagues to use.”

To qualify for the patient transport services, patients must either require assistance from skilled ambulance, have a medical condition that would prevent them from travelling to hospital by any other means, have a medical condition that might put them at risk from harm if they were to travel independently or have treatment with side effects that requires support from skilled ambulance staff.

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