In Bergen, taxi companies are fined if they arrive more than half an hour late for agreed transport of patients.
The fee is 700 kroner, increasing to 1000 kroner if the delay is more than an hour, reported Bergens Tidende newspaper.
Ann-Mari Høiland, head of the Helse Bergen department for patient travel, gave a statement on Thursday to the board of Helse Bergen about the problems with taxi transportation of patients.
‘Now we are going to work hard,’ she said concerning the penalties, which were introduced earlier this month. She didn’t have any figures on how many fines will be incurred on a regular day, but daily, the company orders approximately 1,400 trips to and from treatment.
In May, Norges Taxi, and Christiania Taxi, took over parts of the contract from Bergen Taxi, who had been working alone transporting patients until then. During the first two months, there were more complaints than usual, but now they are back at the same level as they’d been when Bergen Taxi were doing the transports alone, said Høiland.
‘We thought there would be startup problems. Now we want to see if these sanctions show results before we can do anything else’, Høiland told Bergens Tidende. She said 90% of trips are conducted at the agreed time.
© NTB Scanpix / Norway Today
