Terminally ill people now have a dedicated ambulance service to take them to the place they want to die.
North East Ambulance Service has created the End of Life Transport scheme in order to help patients plan where they want to go to die, such as a hospice, care unit or home.
A pilot of the service found that 80% of users got to their destination in under two hours, having been transported by dedicated ambulances and specialist end-of-life trained carers.
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The new scheme will stay separate from the NEAS emergency response service which has previously been criticised for being unable to meet 999 response times.
An NEAS statement read: "Rather than detracting from the frontline, this service actually supports it by reducing the number of last minute calls to 999, which would have resulted in an emergency ambulance and where a patient would have been taken to hospital."
Credit: PA
Macmillan Cancer Support clinical nurse specialist Tony McCoy said staff on the new scheme went 'way beyond' what was expected of them during the pilot.
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The pilot itself ran between October 2015 and March 2016 and saw 1037 people taken from hospital to their home.
Words by George Pavlou
Featured image credit: PA
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