(23 Jul 2020, 7:49 am)James101 wrote It’s a real problem. Largely invisible as patients have no other choice but to make the arduous journey via Stockton or pay for taxis/lifts as it’s the only way to get treated. It’s even worse for parts of the Durham coast who fall under the North Tees trust.Fair to say it's one that's been on my radar for quite a while, the intersite shuttle bus was ran as a registered service years ago funded primarily by Hartlepool council. Compass Royston ran it with the B7RLE that later ended up being the Teesside Park bus for years. Once the council withdrew the funding the NHS trust has funded a minibus shuttle ever since, though it's been cut back more and more over the years and is now down to just one minibus, with 23Taxis running some extra journeys commercially, though prebookable only (and hence not registered). As far as I know priority is given to patients and staff are as good as banned from using it. Many staff were moved from Hartlepool to North Tees many years ago and have seen transport progressively withdrawn for them.
Rationalising clinics to one location in a NHS trust seems to be fairly common, but the transport provision to facilitate this seems to differ greatly. Up in Newcastle the link is provided by fully fledged stagecarriage services, integrated into the rest of the network, such as the 47. Down in Hartlepool it’s a inter-site transit minibus, must be pre booked and priority is given to staff and not for use by visitors. Some journeys are fee and others are chargeable but there’s not much reasoning to which are free and which aren’t. Only picks up-drops off at the hospital so is only truly of use for inter-site travel unless you live walking distance to the hospital in the first place.
I felt as if using Flex via Wynyard was cheating the system. Then I realised that’s bizarre - just give us a proper service and we would have to jump through hoops.
Personally I think there is potential for a commercial service there that would link the two hospital sites via Hartlepool centre and Billingham which doesn't have a direct Hospital bus. It would have to run early and late for both staff and afternoon/evening visiting times to be of much use though which is obviously a stumbling block. It would likely need the funding from the existing shuttles too which I can't imagine the NHS would be too keen at first. So it's a bit of a catch 22 in terms of running anything.