A £30k ambulance to take hospital patients to a care centre 200 yards away has come into service.

The Citroen minibus was introduced after Great Western Hospital chiefs grew frustrated at delays caused by contracted transport firm Arriva.

A decision to purchase a new GWH ambulance was taken by hospital directors in November.

The new vehicle was estimated to cost £30,000 a year to run. It will take patients between the main GWH building and the Swindon Intermediate Care Centre (SWICC) across the road, where those requiring rehabilitation care are looked after.

It is expected to transfer around five patients a day.

Kevin McNamara, director of strategy and community services for the Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, told the November meeting: “One of the issues historically has been that we’ve had to get transport through Arriva to transfer a patient from Great Western into SWICC, which is 200 yards over the road – which is a bit ridiculous.”

Arriva provides non-emergency ambulance services to NHS trusts across the South West, meaning patients can face “long delays” for vehicles to arrive. 

GWH chief executive Nerissa Vaughan said: “This is a crazy problem, where you’re just moving across the road and having to bring ambulances from all over Wiltshire.”

Responding to the comments made in that meeting, Arriva said that its contract did not contain “specific expectations” on transporting patients between GWH and SWICC. 

Spokesman Mark Feather said: “We work in close partnership with commissioners and Great Western Hospital to bring ongoing improvement to our patient transport services.”

However, GWH chiefs went ahead with the purchase of an ambulance of their own. 

It was introduced between Christmas and New Year, hospital directors heard at a board meeting last week. 

Kevin McNamara said: “We’ve started to use that not only to get patients into SWICC, but also patients that require an outpatient appointment, are in SWICC and need to come back into the Great Western.

“That should free up capacity elsewhere to support the site.

“Our goal is that we shouldn’t be using any external provider to transfer to and from SWICC, because we’ve got a vehicle on site.”

He said that the hospital was working with NHS Swindon Clinical Commissioning Group to ensure that transport capacity freed-up as a result of the new ambulance “stayed within Swindon”.