Report in to transport published
Posted on Tuesday 8th August 2017
NHS Dorset Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), Dorset County Council, Bournemouth Borough Council and Borough of Poole have set up a new Transport Reference Group to develop an integrated transport system for non-emergency health and social care across Dorset if found to be possible.
The group will identify gaps in transport connections to health services across the county and consider what can be done to address them. They will also work alongside local healthcare transport schemes, such as e-Zec, which is contracted to provide transport for non-urgent NHS patients.
As a first step, the group has published a report that looks at concerns about transport that people raised during consultation on the CCG’s Clinical Services Review (CSR) which ran between December 2016 and the end of February 2017 and what could be done to address them.
Options could include sharing vehicles and routes, moving stops to make them more accessible, making better use of community and voluntary transport schemes, and using technology to help organise and schedule services.
Tim Goodson, Chief Officer of NHS Dorset CCG, said: “It was clear from the feedback we received during the public consultation phase of the CSR that travel is a real concern amongst people living in and around Dorset.
“We have carried out some additional work to provide assurance of the travel times we used in the proposals and to explore how transport services could work better in the future. We want to reassure people that although some care may be delivered from different locations in the future, the impact of these changes may not be negative.”
The group, which comprises councillors and transport leads from the four partner organisations, will start by considering the transport infrastructure across Dorset, Bournemouth and Poole before looking at how specific ways of joint working could start to be introduced next year.
A separate report by the South Western Ambulance Service Trust (SWASFT) detailing the impact of the proposals on emergency transport will be published shortly.