Royal Mail not delivering mail

soolin

Baldytyke88 said:

As both letters were from the NHS, perhaps they were sent late?

It may help if you register for an online NHS account and then the notifications will be there straight away.

Not necessarily. Both myself and my OH have had some health issues in the past year and between us have to visit 4 different centres for various treatments. Only  1 of those centres, plus our GP surgery use the app, the others are still paper based only. Two of the hospitals actually phone as well to make sure we have our letters, and most of the time the phone call comes a week or more before.  One of the paper based hospitals have their own online system, which is brilliant, but unfortunately only covers one specific area and if we phone to enquire about something we are told it will be sent by post, but as post is so poor they often read the letter out to us over the phone. 

As above we have had several letters go astray , some arrive several weeks after the appointment and some never arrive. I’m in London incidentally. 

For less urgent matters a birthday card to Lancashire took over 2 weeks to arrive and one to Kent took 10 days.  

KxMx

My local hospital trialled an online letters system just before covid, they then pulled it within a few years no replacements as yet.

Although they've just bought very expensive software to unify their internal communications so maybe, just maybe external patient communications are next.

Also when my GP did an electronic hospital referral nothing ever showed up on the NHS app besides I was on a waiting list. This dropped off after a year well after I'd been seen, treated and discharged. 


So while should be as simple as switching to the NHS App or individual Hospital electronic system, that certainly isn't reality for all of us. 

p00hsticks

Baldytyke88 said:

As both letters were from the NHS, perhaps they were sent late?

It may help if you register for an online NHS account and then the notifications will be there straight away.

I was going to say the same thing - I suspect that the NHS mailing system is likely to be as much at fault as Royal Mail.

In the last year I've had a letter from the NHS telling me when to check in for surgery waiting on the mat for me when I returned from after being discharged having had the surgery, a letter with blood forms go missing and the requested replacement taking ten days to arrive, and an invite to a telephone appointment that I only found out because I needed to rearrange it was actually meant to be a face-to-face appointment.

A replacement debit card, on the other hand, arrived 48 hours after it was ordered, and most of our other mail is delivered in a reasonably timely fashion, so I've conclude that much of the delays and mistakes are within the NHS system (I'm still very grateful to them though!)

Torry_Quine

As health is devolved then it's your MSP you need to contact. 

The one thing I'd suggest is does the hospital have your mobile number as they will send text reminders before the appointment. It's not the first time a text has informed about an appointment but no letter.

molerat

Torry_Quine said:

As health is devolved then it's your MSP you need to contact. 

The one thing I'd suggest is does the hospital have your mobile number as they will might if you are lucky send text reminders before the appointment. It's not the first time a text has informed about an appointment but no letter.

Corrected that for you from my experience of NHS Grampian, very hit and miss with the appointment texting.

Torry_Quine

molerat said:

Torry_Quine said:

As health is devolved then it's your MSP you need to contact. 

The one thing I'd suggest is does the hospital have your mobile number as they will might if you are lucky send text reminders before the appointment. It's not the first time a text has informed about an appointment but no letter.

Corrected that for you from my experience of NHS Grampian, very hit and miss with the appointment texting.

My experience of NHS Grampian is that I and my family have always got text reminders. Very useful. 

Gaberdeen

Torry_Quine said:

As health is devolved then it's your MSP you need to contact. 

The one thing I'd suggest is does the hospital have your mobile number as they will send text reminders before the appointment. It's not the first time a text has informed about an appointment but no letter.

As previously stated, it's all the mail that's being delayed, from bills to bank-statements, payslips, credit cards, pin numbers. The lot.I'm 100% sure the delays are Royal Mail, not the NHS.

I work offshore so there's a 2 in 5 chance that I'd not get a text message until I'm home, anyway - being that there's no phone signal out here.

That would have made for a lovely surprise, popping along to spiders for a pint after a hitch and getting a text that I've got an appointment in under 2 hours I didn't know about! 

RedImp_2

My sister in law sent a postcard to us 1st class from the same city we live in (don’t ask), it arrived yesterday 15 days after posting.  On the same day she sent one to Arkansas, as you are probably going to guess , that arrived several days before ours.

Murphybear

KxMx said:

My local hospital trialled an online letters system just before covid, they then pulled it within a few years no replacements as yet.

Although they've just bought very expensive software to unify their internal communications so maybe, just maybe external patient communications are next.

Also when my GP did an electronic hospital referral nothing ever showed up on the NHS app besides I was on a waiting list. This dropped off after a year well after I'd been seen, treated and discharged. 


So while should be as simple as switching to the NHS App or individual Hospital electronic system, that certainly isn't reality for all of us. 

When I saw my GP recently he referred me to hospital.  I asked him how long it would take for the hospital to get the referral.  “It’s done” he said 

soolin

Murphybear said:

KxMx said:

My local hospital trialled an online letters system just before covid, they then pulled it within a few years no replacements as yet.

Although they've just bought very expensive software to unify their internal communications so maybe, just maybe external patient communications are next.

Also when my GP did an electronic hospital referral nothing ever showed up on the NHS app besides I was on a waiting list. This dropped off after a year well after I'd been seen, treated and discharged. 


So while should be as simple as switching to the NHS App or individual Hospital electronic system, that certainly isn't reality for all of us. 

When I saw my GP recently he referred me to hospital.  I asked him how long it would take for the hospital to get the referral.  “It’s done” he said 

Alas locally in London even the hospitals don't talk to each other. Hospital A sent my OH for specialist tests and made a follow up appt when the results would be in. We went to hospital B for the tests and apparently they had been rescheduled- we still have never received the letter. A few days later hospital A phoned to see how we'd got on- and we asked them when the follow up appt to discuss the test results had been moved to as OH had still not got them done, and hospital A didn't know anything about the cancellation.