November 10, 2006 - Patient Transportation

Would you offer help if a friend or family member needed a ride to a medical appointment?

SFMH would like to remind you that the same offer can be made when they are hospitalized.

Frequently, patients who are scheduled to see a specialist or have a test in another hospital do not require the help of a professional caregiver. Instead, they just need someone to drive them, help them find the right office or provide moral support.

In fact, people who provide transportation for appointments with specialists or for tests are making a huge contribution to our health care system.

More and more nursing time is being consumed by non-emergency patient transfers. Donna Piekarski, staffing coordinator at SFMH, says there have been over 200 nursing hours used in the past six months accompanying various patients.

“It’s really problematic and costly,” she says, noting that with the staff shortages this often creates problems in maintaining full staff coverage for the in-patient units.

The costs of providing paid staff for non-emergency patient transfers are also a concern. At SFMH alone, those costs run into tens of thousands of dollars each year.

“In many cases, that’s money that is unnecessarily taken away from active patient care needs,” comments Director of Patient Care Services Joan Kuiack.

Here is how you can help:

If you are able to drive or travel with a patient, talk about this with the nursing staff as soon as they are admitted

Staff can then contact you as soon as appointments are made, so that everyone can schedule their time in advance as much as possible.

Driving or accompanying a patient offers a number of advantages for both patient and family:

It provides the escort with an opportunity to speak directly to the specialist or learn more about the tests that have been booked.

It reduces the chance of arriving late or missing an appointment. (Specialists and diagnostic equipment are fully booked, and any disruption to their schedule is a serious concern.)

It eliminates long waits. (Often, the wait for a return trip by ambulance can be eight hours or longer while they transport other patients or attend to emergencies).

“Ambulances should be our last resort for routine appointment trips,” says Kuiack. “We need to be smart about how we use the vital services that are available to us.”