HARD faced patients are waltzing out of hospital and taking a quick step to their ballroom dancing sessions - by ambulance. Now, in an effort to clamp down on patients abusing the overstretched ambulance service, Salford hospital bosses have introduced a new system where all non urgent requests are questioned. Under the new system, only patients whose health would suffer if they travelled by private car or public transport will have their request for transport granted.

Hospital bosses have warned that this could mean someone who has been attending Hope or Ladywell Hospitals for several years could find they are no longer assigned an ambulance.

The move has been prompted by the massive pressures facing the ambulance service - much of it caused by patients requesting an ambulance when they don't really need one. Health chiefs say some of the more astonishing requests have been to drop patients off for ballroom dancing sessions, instead of taking them home. And asking to be dropped at the shops or the bus station.

This often means journeys take longer because there are several people to pick up en route and patients often arrive late for appointments or have a long wait for an anbulance home after treatment.

A spokesman for Salford Royal Hospitals NHS Trust said: "A patient's medical condition will vary over time and we are taking the common sense approach.

"We want to reassure people that it will be a member of their clinical team who will decide whether they should have an ambulance or not.

"Each request will be looked at individually and all difficulties considered."

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