Optimizing non-emergency medical transport routes to get patients where they need to be, on time.
Patient Transport Services Queensland (PTSQ) provides non-emergency medical transport for patients who need to travel to and from hospitals, specialist appointments, and aged care facilities across Queensland. Their service fills a critical gap in the healthcare system, ensuring that patients who cannot drive themselves or use public transport can still access the medical care they need.
PTSQ handles a diverse range of transport requirements, from wheelchair-accessible vehicles to stretcher transport for patients with limited mobility. Every trip requires careful scheduling to ensure patients arrive on time for appointments and are collected promptly afterward. The stakes are high -- a missed appointment can mean weeks of delay in a patient's treatment plan.
Coordinating non-emergency medical transport is far more complex than standard delivery logistics. PTSQ manages a fleet of vehicles across a vast geographic area, with each vehicle potentially handling multiple patient pickups and drop-offs throughout the day. Patients have fixed appointment times that cannot be missed, and many require specialized vehicle configurations.
Before Locate2u, PTSQ's scheduling team spent significant time manually planning routes, trying to balance patient appointment times with driver availability, vehicle types, and travel distances. The manual process made it difficult to maximize vehicle utilization, and last-minute bookings or cancellations could throw an entire day's schedule into disarray.
PTSQ needed a route optimization and fleet management platform purpose-built for complex, time-sensitive scheduling. The solution had to handle multiple pickup and drop-off points per route, respect fixed appointment times, and allow the dispatch team to quickly adjust when schedules changed. Real-time tracking was essential so the team could monitor every vehicle and respond immediately if a transport was running behind schedule -- because patients cannot afford to miss their medical appointments.
PTSQ adopted Locate2u to bring route optimization and real-time fleet management to their medical transport operations. The platform's routing engine accounts for patient appointment times, vehicle types, driver availability, and geographic constraints to generate optimized schedules that maximize fleet utilization while ensuring every patient arrives on time.
Real-time tracking gives the dispatch team a live dashboard showing every vehicle in the fleet. If a transport is running behind due to traffic or an extended patient pickup, the team can see the delay immediately and take action -- whether that means reassigning a subsequent pickup to another vehicle or notifying the receiving facility of a revised arrival time.
Patient transport bookings flow into Locate2u with all relevant details: pickup address, destination, appointment time, vehicle requirements, and any special notes about the patient's mobility needs. The route optimization engine then assigns each booking to the most appropriate vehicle and builds an efficient route sequence that respects every time constraint.
Drivers receive their schedules on the Locate2u app, with clear pickup and drop-off information for each patient. The dispatch team monitors progress throughout the day, and the system automatically flags any transport that risks arriving late. Fleet management reports provide insights into vehicle utilization, on-time performance, and operational efficiency over time.
Locate2u has strengthened PTSQ's ability to deliver reliable, on-time medical transport across Queensland.
"Our patients depend on us to get them to their medical appointments on time. Locate2u route optimization and real-time tracking give our dispatch team the tools they need to make sure that happens, every single day."