"Booking transport is a nightmare"

Trying to book transport for elderly relatives is problematic, difficult and very inconvenient.

The process expects you to contact the clinic of the Consultant who has requested the various tests or OPA and ask their secretary to book the appt.

What happens if you can't get through?

Most of us do not have jobs where we can sit on the phone for the whole day trying to book transport.

Even when transport has supposedly been booked, nothing turns up and when I call and speak to transport, they inform me that nothing has been booked.

For my elderly mother who is housebound, getting ready (2 hours ahead of the apt) is extremely stressful and anxiety provoking - then when the transport does not come as expected, very demoralizing.

This two-step process invites mistakes to be made and requests to be overlooked.

Surely, in this day and age, for those of us that have access to computers, could there not be an email account set up where requests for transport is made by patients or relatives to a central transport email account; we can be sure it is booked as we would get a confirmation email.

For those who do not have email, then surely booking directly with transport is the easiest thing to do and less likely to incur mistakes as this would be a relatively small number of patients.