According to the Emergency Medical Service (EMS), the supplier “Amber Motors” was supposed to resume the service from Thursday.
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Could have affected up to one hundred patients
As reported by the Ministry of Health (MoH), patient transportation services are currently provided throughout Lithuania, and registration is carried out according to valid criteria and established deadlines.
“In the past period, temporary service organization disruptions due to carrier capacity shortages were recorded in certain municipalities, but they were promptly resolved. The Ministry of Health, together with the Emergency Medical Service, continues to monitor the situation and, if necessary, takes measures to ensure that patients receive the service on time,” the MoH stated in a comment conveyed to BNS.
BNS wrote that due to the supplier’s actions, it was identified that the transportation service with regular passenger cars could have been disrupted in 13 municipalities in mid-July, and with cars adapted for disabled persons in eight municipalities.
To prevent inconvenience to patients, EMS urgently conducted low-value public procurements to acquire temporary non-specialized patient transportation services in these municipalities.
According to the service, 21 short-term service contracts were concluded for this purpose, with a total value of 21 thousand euros.
According to EMS representative Tomas Bagdonas, up to one hundred patients could have been affected by the temporary disruptions.
“We do not know the exact numbers. Based on operational practice and historical transportation data, we see that such patients could have been from several dozen to one hundred during the few days when they were not registered for the service,” T. Bagdonas told BNS.
“Since the majority of transportation services are provided for planned medical consultations, and registration is required from two days to a month before the scheduled visit to doctors, it is likely that a significant number of patients who called the Hotline were registered after a few days and received the service. So the actual number of affected individuals is even smaller than stated,” he said.
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Plans to evaluate systematically
BNS also wrote that legal actions aimed at resuming contract execution were initiated by the supplier itself as a procedural goal.
EMS General Director Donatas Paliulionis stated that the business risk or organizational difficulties of this service could not be transferred to the state or patients, so the arising disruptions will be addressed according to valid contracts and legal acts.
In turn, Health Minister Linas Kukuraitis also noted that the consequences of service non-performance will need to be assessed.
“An extraordinary situation – they themselves wanted to return to service provision and the court ordered them to be reinstated, but they are unprepared. We will see what the legal and other consequences will be,” the minister said.
Meanwhile, the MoH emphasized that in the future it plans to systematically evaluate the legal regulation of patient transportation service organization and establish an inter-institutional working group to propose alternatives for organizing non-specialized patient transportation.
Patient transportation is a service designed to ensure patients’ travel to and from medical institutions when, due to health condition, age, or social reasons, they cannot arrive independently.
This service was tested in 20 municipalities across the country from August 2023 and started to be provided nationally from early July 2024.
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