A REGULAR hospital outpatient has criticised the “shocking” waiting times for patient transport to take her home from appointments.

Lesley-Anne Brennan, who is wheelchair-bound due to her fractured back, has waited for more than two hours for the ambulance saloon car to take her back to Peacehaven.

The 70-year-old also suffers from short bowel syndrome, and has a colostomy bag.

She goes to hospital about six times a month and has used the patient transport service, organised by the South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS), 90 times over the last year to travel to and from appointments at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton and the Princess Royal in Haywards Heath.

On two consecutive days last week, Ms Brennan said she waited more than two hours for her patient transport to take her home.

She said: “I don’t think they realise how this affects people’s health, it is just shocking.

“My bag fills up due to how long I have to wait and I have to go and empty it.

“I take painkillers but I don’t have an endless supply to bring with me.

“I have complained officially to SCAS, but they haven’t done anything.

“When the driver did finally turn up, he was bright and breezy.

“I asked him if was going to apologise and he just replied ‘why should I be sorry? I work hard’.

“I don’t think the drivers should be taking an hour’s lunch break if it is going to lead to patients like me having to wait for more than two hours.

“Their own ethos is that they pick people up within an hour of their appointment ending.

“It seems they wait until a handful of people build up and then send the vehicle to pick us up.”

A spokesman from the patient experience team at SCAS said it investigated Ms Brennan’s complaint when it was received.

It found her patient transport had “regrettably” been late to arrive for six of the 90 journeys she had taken between May 1, 2017, and Wednesday last week.

The spokesman did not comment on the two incidences last week.

He said its contract stated an ambulance should arrive within an hour of the service being notified the patient was ready to be collected.

He said: “In our response to Lesley-Anne’s complaint we apologised for the delays to these six journeys and identified actions we had taken in two of those occasions to reduce the likelihood of a delay happening in the future for the same reason.

“Unfortunately, due to unforeseen operational issues on the day, such as adverse winter weather, traffic delays, unexpected demands on the service, a small number of patient journeys may not happen as timely as we or the patients may like.

“The vast majority of patient transport users in Sussex receive a good quality service from SCAS, as can be seen by the surveys conducted independently by Healthwatch Sussex that demonstrated 80 per cent of users were satisfied or very satisfied with the service SCAS provides.”