If you or a family member use non-emergency patient transport (NEPT) services, you may well be aware that this is an area often beset with problems. The annual patient experience survey shows this is consistently one of the lowest rated areas in kidney care and Kidney Care UK has long campaigned for improvements. Problems with the transport that takes them to or from dialysis sessions therefore have a major impact on the quality of life of kidney patients.
As part of its campaigning work, Kidney Care UK and its partners have worked on two major reports on transport for people on dialysis. The first included a set of recommendations on standards for transport for patients who receive haemodialysis treatment. We then worked with HealthWatch and Age UK to gather more evidence about the challenges and possible ways to improve patient transport.
We are pleased that, in response to these and other reports highlighting difficulties with patient transport services, NHS England are reviewing patient transport services in England and have asked Kidney Care UK to be involved. We will work to ensure that the experience of kidney patients is understood and to promote the need for significant improvements in patient transport services, based on the recommendations we developed with colleagues in the kidney community.
As part of the review, NHS England are asking for people’s views and experience. They want to hear examples of problems and of where things have worked well, as well as ideas of how to improve transport services. It would be fantastic if people who use NEPT could share their experience and help guide the report and its recommendations.
If you’d like to get involved you can complete the online form – deadline 13 March 2020. Or if you would prefer you can send your comments about transport to us at [email protected] and we will collate all the comments we receive and send them into the review. If you send comments to us, please could we receive them by 9th March 2020.
We will keep you updated on the progress of the review, which is expected to report in July 2020.
