A volunteer-run charity which provides critical free transport services across Scotland’s NHS has secured its latest extension to Tayside, to support delivery of blood samples from locations across Perth and Dundee.

Clinical delivery services provided by Blood Bikes Scotland are already thought to save NHS Scotland £260,000 a year in transport costs.

Now, the charity has signed a deal with NHS Tayside and Perth & Kinross Health and Social Care Partnership to continue its important work following a successful six-month trial.

Chairman of Blood Bikes Scotland, Tim Bartlett, told healthandcare.scot that the charity are currently looking for ways to further develop its services in the area:

“We’ve been in discussions with Tayside for a couple of years, but we first formalised our agreement with them back in the autumn and we’ve doing some runs for them on a trial basis.

“The six-month trial was completed in January and, as a result of that, they’ve asked us to extend and develop further services for them over the next few months.

“We currently deliver blood samples from various locations throughout Perthshire and Tayside to the labs in Perth or in Dundee. These set runs are set to expand, and we are also looking with them to set up ad hoc runs when there’s an urgent requirement – they can call us and we can set up the delivery with the Blood Bike Rider.”

Volunteer motorcyclists from the charity currently carry out an additional blood sample collection each day from a Community Care and Treatment Service in Kinross to be delivered to labs for analysis.

This initiative has cut local phlebotomy waiting times, benefitting both staff and patients.

Blood Bikes Scotland already operates a full service across NHS Borders, NHS Lothian and NHS Forth Valley and is thought to have saved health boards a combined £260,000 in taxi fares in the last year alone.

More than 190 people across Scotland volunteer for the charity and not one takes a salary. Public and corporate donations fully fund the whole service.

Alisson McPherson, NHS Tayside Clinical Laboratory Manager at Diagnostics Laboratories, said the trial has been “very positive” and led to real benefits for local patients:

“We are extremely grateful to Blood Bikes Scotland for providing this voluntary service and support to the local community. We hope to expand this to other areas of our service across NHS Tayside.”

Mr Bartlett told healthandcare.scot that the charity is happy to continue to grow to meet the needs of local NHS transport hubs:

“What we find as soon as we start a service, the service grows because they can’t get this elsewhere and of course it’s a service that’s free of charge for the NHS so there’s a huge benefit for them.

“Once they realise the professionalism and quality of the service we deliver, the demand grows.”

Read more: £5,000 boost as blood bikes move to 7-day service; NHS bike volunteers swap blood for covid tests;

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