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Caring for our callers

Our Customer Care team are one of the main points of contact for people using our services.

The team's role is wide and varied, but their main focus is to:

• Reduce abuse of the 999 call system
• Minimise cancelled appointments on the PTS service
• Act as a customer link to NEAS for general advice
• Investigative complaints
• Recommend services
• Support new business and contracts

Meeting the patients

The Customer Care team hold regular contact meetings with high ambulance user groups such as dialysis, radiotherapy and outpatient departments to try and ensure as seamless an experience as possible.

The team is the first point of contact for staff within hospital departments and is responsible for investigating any problems that arise when booking transport.

You can contact the Customer Care Team  on :

Tees / South Durham areas - 07969 193544
North Durham / South Tyne - 07817 812511
North Tyne / Northumberland - 07973 970994

Or you can email: EDGCustomerCareTeam@neas.nhs.uk .

For more information about making a booking with our Patient Transport Service can click here.

Customer Care within Accident & Emergency

One of the most important areas where our Customer Care team work is on reducing abuse of the 999 service.

In one instance they played a part in the removal of a public telephone box which had cost emergency services in the North East more than £21,000 over a 12 month period!

The team also actively promote schemes such as "Message in a Bottle" to help ensure patients have up to date and accurate information to pass to ambulance crews.

There are currently more than 200 persistent caller cases that have been identified by NEAS. In addition, 62 cases have been successfully closed.

In 2010, the Customer Care team won a Home Office "Tilley Award" for helping develop alongside Cleveland Police, North Tees Hospital and Primecare Cleveland a new method of identifying and prosecuting people who abuse the 999 system.