BOSSES at a cash-strapped hospital trust have spent nearly £150,000 on taxis - including almost £50,000 transporting pieces of paper.

North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Trust, which is £13.5m in the red, paid out £48,663 ferrying patients from home to hospital and back, or between hospital sites.

Health chiefs spent the same sum transporting staff between sites, and the same amount again transporting notes and medical records.

In all, the trust spent £145,989 on taxis in the financial year 2005 to 2006.

The figures have been obtained using the Freedom of Information Act.

David Allsopp, the trust's director of operations and human resources, said: "When we need to get staff, medical records and patients to the right place quickly, then using a taxi is the most efficient way of doing it.

"We expect to see a saving when we have electronic patient records as there will be no need to transfer patients' records from site to site.

"We are constantly looking at our transport and travel costs, particularly in the light of our financial recovery."

Linda Shields, chairman of the Tees and Hartlepool Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) Forum, said if ambulances were not available then taxis would be the next best bet.

She added: "In this day and age, with all the electronic methods, I would have thought by now there would have been an alternative to sending pieces of paper. It's still £3,000 a week."

Last month, it was revealed the trust, which runs Hartlepool's hospital and the North Tees site in Stockton, was to axe beds, saving more than £600,000.

Bosses were also planning to cut 74 jobs, including 20 nurses, to make savings. The taxi journeys include taking patients from the University Hospital of Hartlepool to the University Hospital of North Tees, in Stockton, James Cook University Hospital, in Middlesbrough, or Sunderland Eye Infirmary. Patients are also routinely taken from home to hospital and back by taxi.

A spokesman for the trust said: "By using a taxi you are not taking an emergency vehicle off the road and therefore it is able to answer an emergency call."

The average sum spent by hospital trusts nationally was £128,000 per year.