About us

Our Patient Transfer Service (PTS) is made up of specialists we call Patient Transfer Officers. It is their job to safely and comfortably transport more than 40,000 patients to and from scheduled hospital treatments and rest homes every year.

Patient Transfer Manager Yvonne Gemmell says teams cover everything from dialysis runs and discharges from hospital, to the more urgent work of emergency transfers following a plane transfer from different hospitals in New Zealand.

“We provide ongoing, non-urgent care to the public and our community, and provide comfort for patients when they can be most vulnerable. It really shows how far we go to care for the community,” Yvonne says.

Patient Transfer Officers have the benefit of being able to spend more time with patients and often build close and worthwhile relationships with those who need our service.

Yvonne says the service has a high profile around Wellington and the Wairarapa.

“The patient transfer model has and always will be important to us as it is exceptionally important to patients,” Yvonne says.

Though patients have always been transferred by Wellington Free, it wasn’t until a reshuffle in 2009 that PTS as we know it today came into being.

The service was previously very small and saw frontline emergency ambulance service pick up a lot of the work outside the hours of 7am and 5pm.

Today, Patient Transfer Officers focus on providing the best possible care. They work between the hours of 6am and 11pm which allows our paramedics to do what they do best and concentrate on the emergency work.

Lisa Clennick, a former patient transfer officer who now works as the Revenue and Contracts Administrator for the service, says PTS has gone from having four staff transferring 40-60 patients a day to a dedicated crew of 51 transferring 120-160 patients – all in the last 10 years.

Much like our paramedics, it’s hard to explain what a day-to-day looks like for a Patient Transfer Officer.

"Anything goes essentially - transporting a brand new baby from Hutt Hospital to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in Wellington, flight transfers, transporting hospice patients home to spend time with family, transporting our regular dialysis patients to and from their appointments, transporting patients to and from rest homes,” Lisa says.

“People love that our staff are so kind and caring, and that they go the extra mile to put patients first. Our team build rapport with their patients as they often have recurring transports – sometimes up three times a week, 365 days a year,” Yvonne says.

Asking Yvonne what’s next for the service, she explains how she’d love to see Patient Transfer Officers continue to provide the best possible care and comfort.

“I hope to see the service expand so that we are able to assist a wider variety of patients. Whether this is with fit-for-purpose vehicles or additional Patient Transfer Officers, it’s important we’re here for everyone.”

PTS acts as a bridge, essentially taking the patient to the service they need.

“In the past some patients may not have had the ability to attend their appointments, resulting in more acute care being needed later in time. We have been able to ensure patients, especially those with higher needs, are cared for by getting them to and from their appointments safely,” Yvonne says.