New North West transport service for sick children

A new service will launch today (Monday) transporting the most poorly children across the region to the Paediatric Intensive Care Units at Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital and Alder Hey Children’s Hospital.  The North West and North Wales Paediatric Transport Service (NWTS) is a collaboration between the two lead centres and is hosted by Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.  The service has its own dedicated team of 40 people led by Dr Kate Parkins, Consultant on Alder Hey’s Paediatric Intensive Care Unit alongside Dr Rachel Barber, Paediatric Intensive Care Consultant at Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital. 

The new service will provide easier access and service co-ordination for the referring District General Hospital and will ensure that retrieval is independent of bed availability therefore increasing equity and accessibility of service provision.   The retrieval team will function as a mobile Paediatric Intensive Care facility, working to stabilise the child before transfer from the referring hospital.  Rapid transport of members of the team to the referring hospital allows this to start as quickly as possible.

Up until now, transferring children from the region’s district hospitals has been reliant upon not only the availability of staff but also on the availability of an emergency ambulance.  NWTS will now have two dedicated state of the art ambulances provided by Medical Services Limited from its station in Warrington, Cheshire.

The high dependency vehicles are new Renault Masters specially designed and converted to allow treatment to be continued while transporting patients from hospital to paediatric intensive care units. They have been fitted with a 4th seat for a parent to travel with their child, a piped medical air system as well as the standard oxygen system, CCTV incident recording cameras and a baby travelling pod.

David Ellis, Medical Services’ Director of Organisational Development, said:  “We are delighted to have been selected to help launch and actively participate in this specialist service which has been designed to set a new high standard in paediatric intensive care in the region.”

NWTS will have a dedicated 0800 number, which will be manned 24 hours a day, seven days a week and the team will make at least 700 retrievals each year.