Emedgroup Omdömen 114

Despite my Wife requiring special transport and us supplying EMed with a Doctor's Letter explaining her medical imperative they still consider it okay to leave a wheelchair bound woman in the Dialysis Unit waiting room for 3-4 hours meaning that she hasn't had a toilet break in over 9 hours and is late for her main meal because no amount of snacks can prevent a hypoglycaemic episode when you are four hours late for one of your major meals.
A shoddy operation who despite being paid per patient insist on thinking that they can load up an ambulance with patients and treat them like cattle and make them endure a white-knuckle ride through the countryside all to give more money to their shareholders and definitely not their staff.

If I could give a Zero I would. My husband who is a kidney dialysis patient has been messed around so much by them and even ended up in hospital with Pneumonia due to a no show for his dialysis session a few months ago. South Coast Ambulance Service should never have been taken over by these cowboys.

They were late picking up my Mum for her really important appointment.
Led to appointment with consultant being cancelled.
No call to my Mum.
Appalling lack of care.

I am not happy with the way this company at all if I could unscore it I would. My mum who is 82 years old and has vision loss and mobility problems, was denied transport for an appointment at New Cross Hospital that involved drops going in her eyes. They were unable to take her for the time allocated to her and she had been waiting months and months for this to happen and an eye op as well. Sister was worried and took her to the appointment for eye drops and they turned up at my mum address on the day. Because they found out that my sister took her, they said if she can get in a car she can get in a taxis. This is a disgusting way to treat patients especially at 82 years old. I emailed to let them know this and have had no reply so I have emailed again and in between these time she now in hospital. I have informed social service about this and waiting to see what happens.

I have been caller number one for 35 minutes, it is 14:05 waiting to speak to someone to find out where the transport is for a 11:30 pick up. Should I say anything else.
Oh they have just answered my call, no crew has been allocated to the collection. I am now on hold to see what happens now……
I don’t have any idea who runs or pays for this service or even if there is only one driver but I wish people were honest as I would have arranged something else.
Still holding, no way I can go back to the operator and say forget it and arrange an Uber.
They don’t have a car……they will organise a collection when someone is available…..

Always late! ALWAYS! Same old chestnut excuses. Turn up with fuel light on red and we are 5 miles from nearest station and another passenger to pick up. Wheelchair not tied down in vehicle, driver said she didn’t know she had to and what should she use to do this? REALLY? Where is the H&S training here? One driver uses very inappropriate sexualised speech, very offensive to female patients. Vehicles very uncomfortable and the planning is downright outrageous. Company not fit for purpose. Majority of staff are excellent and friendly, and it has to be said are just as fed up as the patients.

The booking process was a tad slow as their computer seemed to be on a go slow. However, the lady phoned me back and all went well. Later on, I got a text to confirm the booking - although they had completely fluffed my surname - which is strange as I had to provide my NHS number AND hospital number!.
Come the day of the appointment, I waited, supposed to be anytime after 2.30 for a 4.30 appointment but the transport never turned up. And the hospital tells me how a missed appointment costs the NHS £160. I wonder who they will send that bill to?
Anyway, quarter past 6 and I get a text from emed telling me that they are en route to collect me from the hospital - I have no way of replying to this text, so a wasted journey.
In my current condition, I am unable to access conventional transport, I can't even get into my own car, so the PT vehicle was essential.
I now have to go through the rigmarole of booking a new hospital appointment as well as another transport appointment. Great.

If I could give ZERO stars I would!! My extremely ill mother was due to be moved to a care home today. We have planned this all week with adult social services and a brokerage company. I travelled up from Devon to help her settle in over the weekend. I packed up all her things and drove them to the home and tried to make it homely. The carer company arrived and took the tablet, medication, care plan and handover and took it to the home. At 2.30pm we had a phone call from this shambles of a company and said they are not doing my mums transport today. When I asked why the Extremely rude and very incompetent person said "because we can't". When I explained my mum is very ill, her medication has gone, care handover etc and she is bed bound. The carer was due to leave this afternoon at 4pm. She then replied "well we can't do it so will be Monday now". We have been lucky the brokerage managed to find a alternative for tomorrow at 2pm!! AVOID THIS COMPANY AT ALL COSTS! RUDE!! HEARTLESS!! DOESN'T CARE ABOUT THE CONSEQUENCES OF A PERSONS HEALTH AND WELLBEING!!! A official complaint will be coming in due course!!! JUST QUIT YOUR DAY JOB AND DO SOMETHING ELSE BEFORE SOMEONE DIES BECAUSE OF YOUR NEGLIGENCE AND CRAP ORGANISATION SKILLS!!!

Appointment time 1 pm pre booked with them ,no show and was told by admin transport team it was at 2.00 pm and admin team had it correct for 1..00 pm.My wife is a recovering stroke patient who had a emergency appt at the hostpital gynocologist had to tell the doctor of the complete b•lllsup up by EMED.Now having to wait another five days to see the gynocologist will EMED TURN UP ?? Absolutely disgusting is the only word I can use and my wife can’t use anything else,should be all sacked

Shambles of a company. Discriminates against patients. Compares a patient without cancer to a patient with cancer. Which all patients should be treated eqaul. Waste of nhs money.

The admin appears to be great but what is the point if the actual service is not fit for purpose in anyway.

Incorrect, untrained or inequiped crew arriving 10 minutes AFTER the patients appointment time on multiple occasions.

So unable to do the job for which they are contracted, no wonder the nhs is in trouble when tax payers money is thrown away like this.

Roll on the pointless enquiry in years to come.

The driver showed up at the last minute, with conditions that were not told to us in advance. We missed the appointment.

As someone deeply concerned about patient safety, I feel compelled to raise awareness about a troubling issue involving EMED, a private ambulance provider responsible for both Patient Transport Services (PTS) and High Dependency Unit (HDU) transfers.

It has recently come to my attention that HDU crews—who are specifically trained and equipped to handle urgent, high-risk patient transfers—are frequently being assigned to routine PTS duties. This is particularly concerning given that EMED already employs dedicated PTS crews whose role is to manage non-urgent patient transport. There is no justifiable reason for redirecting HDU staff to work that falls outside the scope of their specialist training.

While PTS is an important service, it is not interchangeable with HDU care. HDU teams are intended for critically ill patients who require constant monitoring and specialist clinical oversight during transfer. Assigning these crews to lower-priority PTS duties not only misuses their expertise, but also significantly reduces the availability of emergency resources when a real high-dependency case arises.

This practice raises serious safety concerns. If a patient urgently requires HDU transport, there is a real risk that no qualified crew will be available—simply because they have been dispatched to carry out routine work that should have been handled by the PTS team.

The consequences of such delays could be devastating. If you or a loved one has experienced a delay in receiving HDU transport, I strongly encourage you to request clarification on the reason for the delay. Specifically, ask whether the HDU crew was assigned to a PTS duty prior to your transfer. If it is confirmed that your HDU transfer was delayed because the crew was carrying out a lower-priority PTS task beforehand, you may have grounds for a legal claim. In such cases, I recommend speaking with a qualified solicitor who specialises in medical negligence and patient care disputes.

Patient safety must always come first. I urge EMED to review its current allocation practices as a matter of urgency and ensure that HDU crews are reserved exclusively for the critical care duties they are trained to perform. Lives should never be placed at risk due to poor resource management

More NHS millions being wasted by using shady
company that is to scared to publish a usable head office number
They do give a number as head office but it isn't a corporate Head office number
A part time complaints office.
staff who are rude and lie to you give you fake numbers to ring
And are extremely unhelpful this extends to department managers
What makes it worse is company founder a doctor who should be ashamed of this extremely poor company

Twice the transport didn't turn up second time over 3 hrs &still no available transport to allocate for us to return home husband took ill had a stroke previously in April had to make our own way home with wheelchair &was then informed we may.be blocked from using transport in the future because we had to cancel due to illness now classed as doesent meet the criterion for transport we had been waiting over 3hrs when he took ill what other could we do in these circumstances wait till an ambulance became available ? Or be there all night till one became available?

Booking team excellent, most of the crews we used fine, organisation of actual transport a shambles. Transport booked for 1pm appointment. Confirmed day before and morning of appointment. 12.15 no transport telephoned told crew allocated on a break so would see what could be done. Eventually at 12.40 a crew called said would be on the way but would be a least 45 minutes before they arrived. Thus with travel from home to Hospital would be more than an hour after appointment time.
Had to cancel and hope didn’t affect surgery date.
Suggest a taxi is much more expensive but much more reliable than EMED

I would give their service in Surrey zero stars if it werent for the amazing drivers and other staff who are working so hard with care and compassion. My experience since they took over the contract from SCAS has been awful just as other reviewers have said . I have missed several appts and nearly missed more even than that. Emails to managers and patient experience went unresponded to and everything about the service is chaotic. It must be possible to do it better as the previous provider did it and it is frustrating that the ICB gave the contract to a ( presumably ) cheaper bid which has turned out to be useless.

They are absolutely unreliable for patient transport. Transport was booked with them for a morning outpatient clinic. In the morning they called me that they cannot take me to the hospital before 1pm. No other options offered, had to cancel my appointment and struggle two more weeks for the next available one. Better to sort own transport then using them

EMED - Ipswich, Absolutely shocking from some of the ambulance crews! Nothing but power trips exerting their 'authority' over vulnerable patients. A crew refused my dad to board the ambulance on his electric wheelchair because he was a fingers length off his seat and apparently could have slipped out of his seat. But isn't that the whole point of the seatbelt he wears on the wheelchair, to stop him from being able to fall out in the first place, some of these crews have absolutely no IQ there was no way he'd have been able to fall out. He even demonstrated to them him shaking the wheelchair about and him not falling out, but still not enough. Then refused to take him unless he used their wheelchair (Amputee not easy for him to transfer without a lot of effort) so he asked for another crew to come, and that crew were absolutely fine with him and the wheelchair. I think it literally just comes down to some of them power tripping wanting to have some sort of authority over vulnerable people. If you can pay for your own transport then do it! Forget this useless Emed company. Company deserves to go bust and lose their contracts. AVOID AVOID AVOID!!!!!

My daughter has been regularly using hospital transport for some years in the Surrey area. This last 18 months since EMED were awarded the contract the service has literally fallen off a cliff. Drivers are always late or don't show up at all, no texting or phone calls to say the're on time or running late. The impression we have is there are not enough vehicles and drivers to cover the workloads, presumably ensuring high profit margins for EMED at the expense of the
seriously ill patients they are supposed to be caring for. Complaining rarely achieves anything and their Patient Experience (Complaints) line is only manned 8.30am-12.30pm with an out of hours message that simply says that and cuts off, not even a chance to leave a voicemail! We formally complained in writing in April well over 25 working days ago but as yet no response, probably because they are overwhelmed with complaints as I'm sure, given my daughter's regular terrible experiences with EMED she can't be in isolation.