Private ambulance companies have been cashing in on strikes and long response times to 999 calls by charging hundreds of pounds to ferry stricken people to hospital.

In another sign of the growing pressures on the NHS and the private sector’s encroachment on the health service, the Guardian can reveal that several of these services have expanded in recent months to tap into the growing demand.

One firm, Met Medical, announced in November that it would provide paramedic services in St Albans in Hertfordshire, specifically to replace overwhelmed NHS ambulances. Customers can call for urgent home visits when an NHS ambulance has not been immediately available.

“The UK ambulance service is under extreme pressure and it’s taking as long as 24 hours or more for some services to reach patients,” it says on its website.

“If you have a relative who has fallen and is on the floor and needs help or is suffering from another condition where medical help is needed but the ambulance service have been unable to provide an immediate response and you live in or around St Albans, Hertfordshire then we may be able to help.”

The newly expanded services aim to cover all but the immediate threat to life – the “life and limb cover”.

Thousands of patients, including some with serious conditions, faced having to make their own way to hospital on Wednesday as ambulance staff in most areas of England and Wales focused their responses on calls with an urgent risk of death because of a 24-hour strike.

Patients were advised to make their own way and use taxis where possible. Strikes have also been announced for 11 and 23 January.

According to Google Trends data, searches for private ambulance services have risen sharply in recent years. Searches for private ambulances in London were up 150% over the past 12 months, and in the past five years searches for “private ambulance near me” rose 2,450%.

Paramedics can earn between £22 and £35 an hour working for private companies. This is significantly more than they can expect in the NHS, where a paramedic on the lowest band is paid £13.84 an hour, rising to £20.76 for the most experienced staff, according to figures from the trade union Unison.

Individual companies declined to provide specific details of their prices. However, some offered rough estimates. The cost of booking a private ambulance service varies significantly. Shorter trips in densely populated central and eastern England were quoted as costing between £300 and £400, whereas bookings in rural areas or across longer distances can cost more than £1,000.

Three separate companies said they had experienced a sharp increase in demand in the past year.

Testimonials on the Private Ambulance UK website, which advertises services run by Med-PTS, reveal that families have sought out the service for transporting severely injured and terminally ill patients to hospitals and hospices.

“After waiting six hours for an NHS ambulance to transport my terminally ill husband to a Norwich hospice I looked online and found Med-PTS – what a find,” wrote one user.

Med-PTS declined to comment.

The NHS has long subcontracted out the least urgent ambulance services to companies as it struggles to cope with demand. These contracts have largely not been aimed at replacing NHS emergency services but instead focused on non-emergency or critical care hospital and hospice transfers.

However, sources said this had shifted in recent years, with more contracts tendered for auxiliary services that are able to respond to immediate threats to life during a “surge” in demand.

Health service and individual NHS trust contracts in this area have exceeded £100m, according to the BidStats contracts database.

Private ambulance services have offered direct-to-consumer services for hospital transfers, travel to appointments and support for large events such as festivals for several years, but these have also not generally included emergency response-style services.

Dave Hawkins, the chief executive and owner of Met Medical and a registered paramedic, said that his company, which operates in the east of England, was trying to support an NHS under mounting pressures.

“For as long as I can remember we’ve had winter pressures, but now they don’t seem to go away. The demand seems to be constantly on the rise,” he said. “One reason is effective cuts to health and social care and a lack of onward beds in community hospitals and residential homes. It’s about patient flow.”

Met Medical acted as a contractor for the NHS for ad-hoc support, he said, as well as trialling its new paramedic service.

“These are very thin margins on 999 calls and other callouts, particularly with higher fuel costs,” he said. “The public should know it’s not like the sudden extreme supply-and-demand situation and billions made overnight with PPE [personal protective equipment].

“We started the trial as we were getting more and more calls, particularly with older people having falls where they faced long waiting times to be seen.”

The shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, said: “Twelve years of Conservative mismanagement of our NHS has led to a two-tier healthcare system where those who can afford to go private get faster treatment and those who can’t are left waiting longer. This is completely unacceptable.

“Labour has a serious plan to give the NHS the staff it needs so that patients get seen on time. The longer the Conservatives are in power, the longer patients will wait.”

The Department of Health and Social Care declined to comment.
NHS England also declined to comment.