JOURNEYS for patients being taken for hospital appointments could be cut if bus lane rules were relaxed to allow non-emergency ambulances.

Calls for the second-grade ambulances known as Patient Transport Vehicles (PTVs) to be allowed to use bus lanes were made by Oxfordshire-based watchdog Patient Voice last year.

Now South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS) has confirmed it is in discussion with Oxfordshire County Council to use the lanes.

Ambulances can currently use them but non-emergency transport vehicles cannot.

SCAS head of operations Paul Stevens said: “While these are not life and death emergencies, they are often urgent and time critical journeys to access medical care.

“Traffic volume is forever increasing. Longer journey times are causing greater discomfort to patients, and increase the chances of late attendance for hospital and other appointments. These factors inevitably have a detrimental knock-on effect for NHS colleagues in out-patient departments, day centres, and clinics. Utilisation of the bus lanes will cut down patient time on vehicles, help to ensure clinic appointment times are met and enhance overall patient experience.”

John Lant, a member of the pressure Patient Voice who is spearheading the campaign, said: “Being on a bus for hours shaken around is the last thing they need. I would put patient transport ahead of taxis, which can use bus lanes.”

Patient transport operations manager for Oxfordshire Alan Lygo said: “By using the bus lanes it means patients are not travelling for as long a time – they can end up being stuck in traffic for quite a while.”

From April 1 until March 31, 2013, their 85 staff made 99,254 trips to and from the John Radcliffe Hospital, the Churchill Hospital, Nuffield Hospital, and Oxford City.

They have 42 vehicles across Oxfordshire including 33 patient transport ambulance vans, four wheelchair accessible vans, four cars, and one minibus.

Oxfordshire County Council spokesman Owen Morton said: “We are always happy to discuss requests of this nature.

“However, any proposal to relax bus lane restrictions for certain categories of vehicle would need to be considered by the county council’s new cabinet – which means at this stage we’re not in a position to give an indication of the potential for such a proposal to be taken forward.”

Between April 2012 and March this year, SCAS’s Patient Transport Service undertook more than 512,275 patient journeys across its four counties of counties of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Hampshire.

Last year, volunteer ambulance driver George Hunter, from Abingdon, called for the county council to relax the bus gate restrictions in Oxford’s High Street after being fined £60 for driving through it during the prohibited hours of 7.30am-6.30pm.