CHORLEY heart patients are to benefit from a new dedicated ambulance service which will speed up the time they wait to be transferred to and from a specialist cardiac centre.

Patients from Chorley Hospital are regularly transferred for specialist treatment that is only available at Blackpool's Victoria Hospital where the centre is based.

Under a pilot scheme run by Lancashire Ambulance Service and the Victoria, ambulance personnel will work with staff on the cardiac wards, managing all transfers in and out of the unit.

In the past, patients had to wait for an emergency ambulance to become available.

The new vehicle, an addition to Lancashire's front line ambulance fleet, will be exclusively available for these transfers as a result of funding from the Lancashire and Cumbria Coronary Heart Disease Collaborative Innovation Fund.

The new service was launched on Sunday, August 29 and will run seven days a week for a trial period of nine months. Health bosses say it will lead to shorter waiting times for patient transfers.

Irene Good, cardiac pathway co-ordinator at Victoria Hospital, said: "Once we know a patient is ready for transfer either to Blackpool or back to their local hospital and we know a bed is available we can arrange the ambulance and it will be here quickly.

"In the past patients have sometimes faced lengthy waits while an emergency ambulance became available."

Graham Curry, assistant operations manager for Lancashire Ambulance Service, said: "At the moment we are using an emergency ambulance with a full paramedic crew on board to transfer these patients from hospital to hospital.

"By having this new dedicated ambulance we can free up the emergency ambulances to concentrate on providing high quality emergency care to patients across Lancashire."