Today’s correspondent is a taxi driver in Victoria who says:

… we regularly get jobs from AV to transport their patients to hospital. What is the legality around working with AV for initial first aid for patients and our taking walking patients to hospital to free up paramedics and emergency ambulances? The second part to that if I am transpiring their patients to hospital what happens if something goes wrong with a patient? Eg, we have been asked to take people to hospital that have had different injuries or people suffering a mental health emergency etc especially when the ambulances in the area are significantly delayed. I am not a patient transport just a taxi service.

Taxi services are governed in Victoria by the Commercial Passenger Vehicle Industry Act 2017 (Vic) and it has nothing relevant to say on the matter.  Interestingly the Act, its regulations, the Commercial Passenger Vehicle Code of Practice and the standard conditions that apply to driver accreditation do not make it a rule that a driver must accept a hiring (compare that to Point to Point Transport (Taxis and Hire Vehicles) Regulation 2017 (NSW) r 77 ‘Driver of taxi to accept hiring’).

If a booking service is rung with a request for a taxi, that is like any other request and a driver can chose to accept the fare or not.  I cannot see any legal issues.  A taxi can be used to drive anyone to hospital if that is where the passenger wants to go.  Presumably the driver might refuse to take the person if their condition poses a threat to the safety of the driver or the condition of their vehicle (eg if they are going to bleed all over the seats).

If you are transporting a patient to hospital and their condition deteriorates you would have a duty to take reasonable care to do something.  You are not expected to be a paramedic and as a taxi driver you are not expected to provide clinical care or monitoring. But if you see your passenger has collapsed or is suffering due to a medical emergency or trauma, regardless of how they became your passenger, ie whether they hailed you on the street, rang and booked or were booked by AV, you would have a duty to do something. That may be a duty to proceed to hospital or to stop and call triple zero.  It really doesn’t matter whether the booking came from AV or not.

For the patient if their condition deteriorates, they may want to think about pursuing a remedy from AV for failing to properly triage their condition, but that is another matter.

In short, I cannot see any legal issues. It is no different to accepting any fare. If you’re not comfortable accepting that fare, then don’t.

POSTSCRIPT

After making this post I received this question:

I’ve noticed in NSW the Ambulance Services Act 1990 No 16 section23 Unauthorised provision of ambulance transport
(1) A person must not:
(a) directly or indirectly provide or take part in the provision of transport for sick or injured persons for fee or reward, or
(b) conduct for fee or reward any operations similar to the operations carried on by the Ambulance Service under this Act.

I can’t see an exemption here for uber or taxi drivers. Would this act technically make it unlawful for these drivers to charge sick or injured people to be taken to the ED?

And of course, in Victoria it is unlawful to provide emergency and non-emergency patient transport without an appropirate approval. But that is not what is happening here. The law has to be read in context which includes that there are lawful taxi and other commercial passenger services (uber etc). They provide transport for people and some of those people may be sick or injured and may want to go to hospital or a medical practice. Ambulance services encourage people to make use of them to make their own way to care if they don’t need an ambulance.

The taxi or uber service is providing a passenger service. The fact that the person is sick or injured is a mere coincidence to that rather than why the service is established. It cannot be unlawful for sick or injured persons to get a taxi or for a person to get a taxi to a hospital. The law that says one cannot provide an unauthorised ambulance service is written by teh same legislature as the one that wrote the legislation to regulate a taxi service. It has to follow that a provider who is operating in accordance with one regulatory scheme (in this case commercial passenger vehicles) is not acting contrary to the other (non-emergency patient transport etc).

Proudly supported by (in alphabetical order) the Australasian College of Paramedicine, the Australian Paramedics Association (NSW), the Australian Paramedics Association (Qld), Natural Hazards Research Australia, NSW Rural Fire Service Association and the NSW SES Volunteers Association. I am responsible for the content in this post including any errors or omissions. Any opinions expressed are mine, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion or understanding of these supporters.

This blog is a general discussion of legal principles only.  It is not legal advice. Do not rely on the information here to make decisions regarding your legal position or to make decisions that affect your legal rights or responsibilities. For advice on your particular circumstances always consult an admitted legal practitioner in your state or territory.