Patient transport service
Patient transport service ( Germany ), Fahrtendienst ( Austria ), and ambulance runs or patient journeys referred for health reasons necessary passenger transport. Sometimes not qualified ambulance called to her from "qualified" ambulance delineate.
They are considered unqualified because the patients being transported do not require medical care or the medical equipment of an ambulance during the transport. If a patient is unable to walk (e.g. due to an existing underlying disease), the transport must be carried out sitting in a carrying chair or lying on a stretcher.
For this purpose - if medical care is otherwise unnecessary during transport - the patient transport service is the means of transport of choice.
Legal delimitation
In contrast to patient transport, the patient transport service is not part of the rescue service . The providers of driving services therefore do not have to meet the (medical) requirements of the emergency services. Rather, this service falls into the area of regular passenger transport , as does the taxi business and the service for the disabled .
As a rule, medically trained personnel are not deployed either on the vehicles or in the operations center (telephone). In order to prevent misunderstandings and mix-ups among medical laypeople, the operators of patient transport services are encouraged to avoid confusion with ambulance services (usually through corresponding requirements from the competent licensing authority). Unauthorized advertising with the term “ambulance” can constitute a violation of competition law.
If an emergency occurs during a transport, the transport must be interrupted, the rescue service called in and the patient must be looked after by the driving staff present until the rescue service arrives. Because of the lower legal obligations, patient transport services can usually be offered more cheaply than patient transport, mainly because of lower personnel and equipment costs.
Factual delimitation
In the case of routes that are not approved by the health insurance as ambulance transport, the more cost-effective patient transport services come into play, provided that patients cannot use public transport due to their limited mobility and do not require specialist care by emergency personnel (e.g. blood pressure control, oxygen administration or the like).
If driving services are required as part of an outpatient treatment, reimbursement of costs is only possible in special exceptional cases ( e.g. dialysis and oncological chemotherapy or radiation therapy with high treatment frequency over a longer period of time) and is not offered by every health insurance company.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Staufer, Qualified Ambulance Transport and Ambulance - in: Arge RettRecht eV, Interfaces in the Rescue Service, SK Verlag 2012
- ↑ Information on illegal advertising on staufer.de
