Manitoba’s underused medical transport services clamouring to take patients to hospital

Dave Underwood can’t wrap his mind around the situation.

He’s wondering why patients in Manitoba are taking expensive ambulances to their sometimes non-urgent medical appointments – or cancelling appointments altogether – instead of using the service he offers.

Mobility transportation services in the province – like Underwood’s Stonewall & Area Mobility Services – are frustrated as a result.

“There are people in Stonewall, RM of Rockwood, Rosser, or Woodlands that need transportation to Health Sciences Centre or to Cancer Care Manitoba that can’t afford it, but we are here. They just need help paying for it,” said Underwood, the company’s coordinator.

Underwood is echoing the frustrations of other private transport companies who say they could be doing more to support Manitoba’s health-care system.

Underwood launched his mobility service during the start of COVID. They offer handicap transport for patients living in communities north of Winnipeg. The company receives some funding from the province

“We transport anybody that’s over the age of 65, has medical issues, anybody that can’t drive, anybody that has sight or hearing impairment, or that needs a medical transport,” he told CityNews.

Underwood has six drivers on staff, all with first-aid training, operating four mobility buses. They only transport patients who are in stable condition.

For this reason, Underwood says he doesn’t understand why the Interlake-Eastern Regional Health Authority doesn’t use his service more, and other similar providers in the area, to drive patients to much-needed appointments.

“It’s just a lack of understanding why the hospital, or the Interlake-Eastern Regional Health Authority, in this case, won’t pay for us to transport people to their appointments, such as Cancer Care Manitoba, instead of taking an ambulance out of service to send them via ambulance, where the ambulance is $1,400, whereas we are $40,” said Underwood.

RELATED: Retired paramedics stepping up to help get patients to appointments in Manitoba’s Interlake region

Underwood says more Manitobans need to be made aware that these services are available.

John Mackay, the owner of Community Paramedics Service in Selkirk, is in the same boat. His transport service has offered more than 6,000 medical transports since 2022.

Mackay says patients in rural Manitoba continue to miss their appointments because services such as his are underutilized, and often patients don’t know they exist.

“I would say that they need to take a good look at the autonomy that a region has to go about doing its business in health care and serving patients, because the patients now are not getting to their appointments,” Mackay told CityNews last month.

Retired paramedic John Mackay moving wheelchair into vehicle. (Alex Karpa, CityNews)

There is a grant program in the province for non-profit agencies that are providing transport services, but Duane Nicol from the City of Selkirk says that funding has been frozen for several years.

“It has not kept up with the cost of living, the cost of providing that service as it escalates overtime,” said Nicol, the city’s chief administrative officer. “We also need to re-invest in some of the vehicles that we already have. Not just buses, but smaller, individual units so that we can provide people that individual care, taking them to the facilities for dialysis appointments or cancer treatment.

“If we focus on the citizen and not the how, but what the need is, and then work to fulfill the need, that should be the primary driver and it seems we are failing to do that.”

In a statement to CityNews Thursday, Shared Health says, “The company you are referring to is not licensed by Manitoba Health to provide patient transport to individuals requiring stretcher-based transportation and/or potential medical interventions by trained clinical escorts should the patient’s condition begin to deteriorate.”