4 | UK Transport Awards 2022 Feb22120 Best Community Transport Service - South London For over twenty years, the team at Healthcare And Transport Services Group (HATS) has been leading the way when it comes to providing essential transport within communities across the UK. What was once a car based Private Hire and Courier has grown into an incredible logistics resource. We take a look at how their growth has brought them such success in the UK Transport Awards 2022. When two partners got together in December 1995, they couldn’t have known that their Private Hire and Courier business in South West London would form the basis of a transport group operating across multiple healthcare divisions and reaching out the length and breadth of England and Wales. The team’s services have become renowned throughout the industry for its dedicated and comprehensive nature, providing NonEmergency Patient Transport (PTS), Special Educational Needs and Disabled (SEND) Home to Schools transportation, Mental Health services and refugee relocation to name a but a few of their services. And yes, their original Private Hire Business is still going, just as strong as it ever was. The growth of HATS has matched the changing needs of the transport industry. The team’s focus has always been on what the community needs above all else. People lie at the very core of the services the team offer. No matter what is being offered, the team have proven themselves more than flexible enough to respond to the specific needs of each individual they serve. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this has been particularly challenging, but it is a challenge that the team although initially daunted has risen to. They stood at the forefront of the emergency response to Covid and provided much needed transport and care support to the NHS throughout this unprecedented period. To do this has required developing a team which has service at the heart of how they think. The HATS team is hired selectively, searching for people who exhibit a high EQ as well as having the yearning to work with people. The team’s work is not simply a taxi service, but the beginning and end of vital medical treatment. This sets the tone for their future hospital stay and provides support during a time in which patients feel especially vulnerable. As such, it’s little wonder that safeguarding is a massive part of how the team think. They have often been celebrated for their commitment to going above and beyond, ensuring patients get home safely and that they are safe to continue their recovery at home. In some cases, team members from HATS have arrived to find patients living in cold homes, or unsafe properties. In these cases, they have secured the premises, called relevant services and taken the patient back to hospital in order until everything had been made safe. It’s this practical mindset, with the team taking pragmatic steps to ensure total safety for patients, that has brought them such success. HATS is now, by contract, the largest PTS provider in the country, safely moving over 2.2 million people last year and accounting for the safe transport of over 30% of all contracted London patient transportation including Covid cases over the two years. It’s not just within the Public Sector: they have some prestigious Private Sector clients, too. The team has been called upon to provide logistical leadership, efficient route design, coordination and delivery of transport to the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics, they currently provide on-site paramedic support to the UK American NFL Training Academy games and have also provided medical response for large attendance open air celebrations. It’s not enough to offer these services. The HATS team are committed to showing themselves to consistently be the best of the best, having been assessed by the Care Quality Commission recently as ‘Good’ overall but receiving an ‘Outstanding’ in the Responsiveness category. To maintain the high standards that they demand of themselves, and that their customers have come to expect, the HATS Group has started an in-house but open-to-all HATS Training Academy. This accredited training facility in London has satellite staff in all of the business’s regional locations to ensure consistency of training and of service at all times. With a one-approach model, staff can move between services and locations with ease, allowing them to offer a responsive and consistent approach to their clients. Often, the team’s ability to act in a way that serves their clients better involves them taking stock of the specific needs that they might have, individual to the patient. A classic example of this is the team’s work with the Chelsea and Westminster NHS Trust, where HATS staff sat down with the Paediatric team to learn how best to meet the needs of children. Children often turn up at hospital anxious; ambulances can be serious, unfamiliar and scary places. HATS adapted a normal ambulance into an “Aqualance”, a less scary, fun looking vehicle packed with non-traditional amusement like game consoles, colouring books, brightly coloured blankets and give away treats. For Great Ormond Street, a Peter Pan themed ambulance was created – the “Peter Pambulance”! This approach has been cheered by children, carers and medical staff because of its fun and vibrancy at an often-difficult time. The HATS Home to School teams have also received acclaim, with drivers and passenger assistants undertaking a comprehensive training package including, but not limited to, safeguarding, first aid, mini-bus driver awareness scheme (MIDAS), passenger assistant training scheme (PATS) and understanding autism and epilepsy awareness. This detailed understanding of the sector allows the HATS team to provide truly astonishing levels of care, with each passenger receiving incredible levels of compassion at all times: the very least they deserve. With operational centres and depots across England and Wales, the level of service that has been achieved is remarkable indeed, setting new standards of excellence for the industry as a whole. It’s clear that this is a team that is always looking forward, anticipating and adapting to the challenges of the future. In some cases, this involves taking a holistic view. The needs of the transport sector have evolved enormously since 1995, and the HATS team have evolved too. Having started out with fossil fuel courier bikes and cars, they are now proud to operate the first
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