NHS Appointment Vent

Takmon

Fosterdog wrote: »

It will be unsecured from the patient end. Too many people are not tech savvy enough to keep their emails secure (just look at the frequency of people having accounts for various things hacked). Plus the sender has no way of stopping emails from ending up in a spam folder, not everyone regularly checks their spam folder.

Emails are not secure and never have been. Emails are sent through various servers when they are sent and at every server someone could intercept it and look at the contents of the email. It is also very easy to spoof emails and I can send an email that appears to come from any email address without even having access to their account.

No matter how secure your email login is sending information by email is never secure.

badmemory

Does it actually matter if your email is secure? You can tell where it is coming from before you open it & there is a delete button (I use it a lot). Sending basic info re an appointment is not high security. Sending info re the results yes it may be, but even so does that matter? Does it matter if some hacker sees that your cholesterol (sp) is higher than it should be or your blood pressure is higher than it should be. After all who really cares apart from you & your family & it is doubtful that they are the hackers.

unforeseen

With emails there is less guarantee of delivery than post. Spam filters tend to be high on the list for a claim of non receipt.

My hospital sends appointments by mail. Since the appointment can be weeks in advance, a text is sent a week beforehand requesting confirmation of attendance and then 2 days before as a reminder.


Only once have I not had a postal appointment come through but one quick phone call when I received the text got me the details needed.

I only got a letter for the first of my 6 weeks of chemo, all the rest were arranged at that first appointment.

JamoLew

Would be very surprised if a shared printer took 4 hours to log off.

With ours we use our ID badge to login and it times out after 2-3min if not printing

unforeseen

JamoLew wrote: »

Would be very surprised if a shared printer took 4 hours to log off.

With ours we use our ID badge to login and it times out after 2-3min if not printing

My thoughts are that the print server dumps any jobs after 4 hours if not printed as part of its housekeeping. If this is the case then the secretary needs to organise their work a bit better.

I wonder if the secretary sends letters to the printer during the day but only goes to the printer at the end of the day to print them out and dumps them at the mail room on the way home. That's what it sounds like to me.

jackieblack

Robin9 wrote: »

That's all very well if you are expecting a letter - what if its for something you don't expect.

I recently received, from the NHS, the most completely pointless letter I have ever received.

The letter was to apologise for the fact that I had not received a previous letter they had sent me, inviting me to a Health Check, due to that letter having a partially incorrect address. (I hadn’t been expecting a letter so had no idea that I hadn’t received something I should have received).

The letter goes on to advise me that they will reissue the invitation letter with the correct address (although I still haven’t received this a month later...) and apologises for any inconvenience caused (by me not receiving something I wasn’t expecting anyway? :huh:)

It then gives me the details of how I can complain about this missed letter, should I so wish (:huh:)

To top it all, my address on this letter is itself partially incorrect :cool:

If this is an example of the efficiency of the NHS, I understand why it is ‘in crisis’

unrecordings

Manxman_in_exile wrote: »

Maybe I'm missing your point, but why would someone be getting a hospital appointment completely out of the blue that they knew nothing about? (Usually your GP would say he's referring you to a specialist, or it would be part of an ongoing course of treatment. Either way you'd be expecting to be contacted).

Sorry if I'm being thick.

No you're not, and it's hard to explain possibly without experiencing it. Certain conditions (my own cancer for example) can catch you in a whirlwind of referrals once side effects start to kick in which cause further side effects which they throw further drugs at which cause more side effects... Granted I've caught most of them, and in 3 1/2 years only missed two (both chemosuite getting the appointment wrong, one by a mere couple of hours so it worked out in the end)

The funniest one was after being rendered immobile by a whatever the collective noun for a number of district nurses is. I was asked if I needed any further 'help'. I said maybe a bit of physio, and an occupational therapist duly arrived unannounced a couple of days later. The next hour was a complete farce... :rotfl:

unrecordings

badmemory wrote: »

Does it actually matter if your email is secure? You can tell where it is coming from before you open it & there is a delete button (I use it a lot). Sending basic info re an appointment is not high security. Sending info re the results yes it may be, but even so does that matter? Does it matter if some hacker sees that your cholesterol (sp) is higher than it should be or your blood pressure is higher than it should be. After all who really cares apart from you & your family & it is doubtful that they are the hackers.

The problem is this is all information phishers can use to gain your trust, especially if the call is coming from say 'no caller id' rather than a verifiable local number. patient email can also be used as a point of entry for those wishing to disrupt NHS systems

unrecordings

jackieblack wrote: »

I recently received, from the NHS, the most completely pointless letter I have ever received.

It then gives me the details of how I can complain about this missed letter, should I so wish (:huh:)

If this is an example of the efficiency of the NHS, I understand why it is ‘in crisis’

Please complain if you can find the time. Nothing will change if their customers (or whatever we're called now) don't give them detailed feedback

jackieblack

unrecordings wrote: »

Please complain if you can find the time. Nothing will change if their customers (or whatever we're called now) don't give them detailed feedback

I’ve emailed them with my ‘feedback’

I was in two minds about doing so as I’d really hate for more resources to be spent on this than have already been wasted, however I concluded, as you say, that nothing will change if everyone just rolls their eyes and says nothing.
(Not holding my breath for any response...)