Balancing Empathy and Eligibility in Patient Transport Support
Enforcing boundaries with empathy
Because the service is funded by the National Health Service (NHS), transport can only be provided to patients who meet defined eligibility criteria. This makes every interaction sensitive: agents assess each case carefully, ask highly personal questions and sometimes decline requests, while staying calm, kind and consistent. A missed call or a wrong eligibility decision can mean a missed appointment.
Eligibility-based decision making
Assess every case against defined NHS eligibility criteria based on what each caller shares during the conversation.
Sensitive conversations
Ask personal questions about mobility, medical equipment and mental health risks, even when those topics may feel invasive or emotionally difficult.
Empathy under pressure
Handle confusion, frustration or distress when eligibility is denied, while staying calm, compassionate and consistent in every response.
Supporting people with complex needs
Most calls come from elderly patients, often with complex medical histories, or from someone acting on their behalf, such as a relative, neighbour, carer or nurse. Hospital staff call too.
Behind each booking is a trip to care: a dialysis session, a hospital discharge, a wheelchair-accessible journey the family cannot arrange alone. Many callers live with mobility challenges, manage chronic conditions or face daily life alone.
What they share is a genuine need for support, and a system that requires them to prove that need. Every interaction calls for patience, clarity and empathy from the very first conversation.
Managing the full patient support journey
Simply Contact runs the HATS Group contact centre from Poznań, Poland, 24/7, 365 days a year. Sixteen agents across two lots handle more than 11,000 calls a month, inbound and outbound, from booking and eligibility checks through journey confirmation, changes and follow-up.
Transport booking and changes
Book non-emergency patient transport, check each request against NHS criteria, and manage cancellations or changes to existing journeys.
Inbound patient support
Handle incoming calls and emails from patients, carers and hospital staff with transport questions and needs.
Outbound journey confirmation
Confirm journey details by phone before transport, so patients know what to expect.
AI line oversight and night control
Monitor HATS' AI confirmation line, call back every patient it misses, and run night control 365 days a year.
Anna Mazur
Project Manager · Simply Contact
Anna specialises in compliance-sensitive and healthcare-adjacent support. She has led the HATS Group account since its launch in spring 2025, growing it from one lot to two with a focus on empathy standards, agent stability and consistent quality.
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What makes eligibility complex and nuanced
There is no single medical profile that guarantees eligibility. Each case is assessed across multiple risk factors, creating grey areas where patient circumstances and formal criteria do not always align.
Symptoms understated
Patients may downplay their symptoms because they don’t want to be a burden, making their actual level of need harder to assess.
Eligibility has changed
Patients who qualified before may no longer meet the criteria after their condition improves, despite expecting the same support.
Support suddenly unavailable
Patients who normally rely on family for transport may suddenly lose that support, creating urgent needs without necessarily changing their eligibility.
How we ensure empathy during eligibility checks
Every agent on the HATS Group project is trained to listen for nuance, avoid assumptions and guide the patient through difficult questions without creating shame or pressure. Here's how we support that:
A consistent call flow
Keeps conversations professional without sounding robotic.
Real-time coaching
Team leads support agents live on challenging calls, and every agent has an individual improvement plan.
Clear escalation paths
Borderline or complex cases move from agent to team leader to project manager and are reviewed together.
Continuous training
A three-week induction designed with HATS around the hardest call: telling a patient in genuine need that they are not eligible. Then 7 HATS-specific modules, 15 product knowledge tests and coaching on British tone and courtesy.
Client collaboration
HATS worked alongside us in Poznań from day one. Our agents have joined HATS Training Academy sessions and hospital visits in London, and QA scorecards are reviewed weekly with HATS leadership.
Consistent performance. Better patient support
Year one of a two-lot operation: faster answers, shorter waits and steady quality, held through a new hospital line and large swings in volume.
contacts handled in year one
Lot 1 answer rate, up from 76%
Lot 1 average wait, down from 96 s
Lot 1 quality score across 1,154 reviewed tickets
OPERATIONAL IMPROVEMENTS DELIVERED
- Cut the average wait on Lot 1 by 63%
- Shortened average handling time on both lots by up to 31%
- Kept Lot 2’s answer rate steady through large swings in monthly volume
- Brought a new hospital line on board, with service back to normal within a month
- Took on appointment confirmations outside the contract and set up a callback for every call the AI line missed
- Kept the launch team together, with no exits on Lot 1 and two agents promoted to QA checker and trainer
James Graydon — Quote
We walked in on day one and it was seamless. A fantastic bunch of people, really up to the role from the get-go. A year later, the same team is still there delivering even higher quality outputs, virtually no turnover, no complaints, KPIs fantastic. We started with a contact centre and have since added night control 365 days a year and additional functions. That growth shows Simply Contact are genuinely trusted partners, not just a supplier.
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