Hundreds of patients including people with cancer and kidney failure have missed important appointments for treatment because ambulances did not arrive to take them to hospital, after privatisation of NHS non-urgent transport services in Sussex this month.

Some elderly patients have had to wait more than five hours for ambulances and been stuck at hospital for long periods after their appointments because the transport service, now run by the private firm Coperforma, has proved so unreliable.



Patients, relatives, NHS bodies and local MPs have severely criticised the service’s performance, and a trade union representing ambulance crews said it was an “absolute shambles”. The NHS organisations that awarded the four-year, £63.5m contract have now launched an investigation.

A host of problems have arisen since Coperforma replaced the NHS’s South East Coast ambulance service (Secamb) as the provider of non-emergency patient transport services on 1 April.



Cancer patients have missed oncology appointments after ambulances failed to turn up to collect them.

Patients with kidney failure have not been able to receive scheduled sessions of kidney dialysis for the same reason, with some missing two of their three treatments in a week.

So many patients have become stuck at the Royal Sussex County hospital in Brighton because their transport has not arrived that it has paid for taxis and other private vehicle suppliers to take them home.



Staff there have had to stay until midnight to ensure kidney patients arriving hours after their scheduled start time have received vital dialysis.

Coperforma crews have been left doing nothing, despite patients’ need to get to hospital, because poor mobile phone reception in parts of Sussex has meant they did not receive details of calls to attend via an app the firm saw as pivotal to the service’s smooth running.

Patients, relatives and NHS staff have faced waits of 45 minutes and more to get through to the firm’s phone lines, which have been unable to cope with demand.

Coperforma vehicles have turned up to collect patients who have already died.

Elizabeth Towner, 70, of Bexhill, who has cancer, missed a 12.50pm appointment for a pre-operation assessment at a hospital in East Grinstead on 4 April. “They told me the ambulance would be here between 10.16am and 11am. I thought there’s no way I’m going to make my appointment,” she said.

She was left on hold for 45 minutes when she rang Coperforma and was eventually told that an ambulance would take her to a rearranged appointment at 3pm that day. But that did not turn up either and she now has to go on a later date. “I don’t see how companies can be allowed to treat people like this. I just think it’s totally unacceptable,” she said.

Maria Caulfield, the Conservative MP for Lewes and until last year an NHS nurse, has demanded answers from Coperforma after constituents complained to her. She has threatened to report the problems to a government minister if they continue.



“Such an unreliable service being provided to residents is simply unacceptable and, as a nurse, I am very aware of how this could have a direct impact upon the health of patients as well as create unwarranted delays within our hospitals and GP surgeries,” she said.



One man in his seventies who is dying of the blood cancer myeloma was left upset after ambulances twice failed to arrive to take him from his care home to hospital in Eastbourne to undergo chemotherapy, on 1 April and again six days later. The man, whose family wanted him to remain nameless, also has Parkinson’s disease and is confused.



“My dad was upset by the whole experience. He was told twice that he would be seeing a consultant and twice dressed and made ready and it came to nothing. He is very weak and this is quite distressing for him, especially in his confused state,” said his daughter.

On the first occasion, she said, Coperforma did not ring to say no ambulance was coming or to explain its non-arrival, and care home staff could not get through on the phone. On 7 April the ambulance had not arrived by 3.30pm, the time of the hospital appointment.



“I told the call handler it was appalling and she agreed with me. At around 4, the hospital finally got a call from the transport itself asking if they still needed them to go pick up my dad. The consultant was leaving at five, so they said no,” the daughter said.



“This is life-and-death stuff, and the incompetence is staggering. Even their own staff agree. We wondered how we could ever trust these guys. As my dad needs to be transported on a stretcher we have no other way of getting him to hospital, although we are wondering how we might book a private ambulance.”



Sussex Clinical Commissioning Groups, a group of seven GP-led CCGs in the county, which handed Coperforma the contract, said: “We recognise that the first few days of the new non-emergency Sussex patient transport service provided by Coperforma were not acceptable and apologise to all patients who were affected by this.



“A combination of initial technical hitches and problems with some of the patient data and journey information transferred from the previous service have created delays. These triggered a significant volume of calls to the call centres, which in turn created further issues; including some patients spending a regrettably long time waiting for transport.”



Coperforma refused to say how many patients had so far been caught up in the problems, though the CCGs said at least several hundred were involved. The firm, which claims to be “transforming hospital transport”, also works for the NHS in Hampshire and London.



Gary Palmer, an official with the GMB trade union, which represents many of the Coperforma personnel involved, said: “Regularly patients are missing their appointments at hospital because they are just not being collected or are so late in being collected that they miss them. We know that hundreds and hundreds of patients have been affected. But given that Coperforma are carrying out 300,000 journeys a year, or about 1,000 every weekday, it could easily be 2,000 or 3,000. It’s been and still is an absolute shambles – chaos.”



Michael Clayton, Coperforma’s chief executive, has apologised for the failings and blamed Secamb, the previous provider, for not supplying it with enough information in advance about the patients it would be transporting, and for asking thousands of patients to contact it on the first day of the change, overloading the company’s system.

In a statement, the company said: “Coperforma apologises unreservedly to all patients who have and are still experiencing delays in patient transport services. We investigate all out-of-line situations and report back to any patients or NHS staff affected.



“Our total focus is in improving the service we are able to provide in partnership with our transport providers and are working through core issues such as validation of patient data. We are currently in receipt of 19 formal complaints, three of which related to patients who had sadly passed away more than a year ago, information that should have been passed on to us prior to the start of our service.”

A spokesperson for South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust said it had cooperated fully at all stages of the service transfer and was not responsible for the transfer of patient data.

“The transition plan for the patient transport service contract required that the data transfer for patients was the responsibility of the Patient Transport Bureau, not Secamb. The PTB, which was independent of our organisation and maintained the full database of patient journeys, was the contact point for patients requiring to book transport.”

• This article was amended on 13 April 2016 to add a statement from South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust.