NHS Appointment Vent
Robin9
Posts: 12,090 Forumite
My wife is being treated for a Breast Cancer - all is going well and the prognosis is good.
She is having a series of chemo 3 weeks apart with a consultant appointment in between. In addition she has had other appointments eg for a PICC line
Last time the receptionists were unable to offer her a consultants appointment and had to pass a message to the consultant's secretary. A week or more passed and no appointment letter. My wife spoke to the secretary and was given an appointment over the phone and told the letter is already in the post.
Another week and no letter. My wife spoke to the secretary again.
The NHS Trust has a paper saving exercise. !
The secretary does not have a printer - she has to go down the corridor, log into a printer , collect the letter, return to her office and put it into post. Her log-on times out after 4 hours. If she sends my wife a letter close to the end of that time it might not print.
The letters she has had warn of missing appointments , costing the NHS Trust money and her going down the waiting list. We seem to have a situation where my wife can be penalised for missing an appointment that was in a letter she didn't get and may even not have been printed, let alone sent.
How does this save paper ? Why can't the secretary have a printer or desk - cost say £50 (or less)?
email apparently is not secure.
She is having a series of chemo 3 weeks apart with a consultant appointment in between. In addition she has had other appointments eg for a PICC line
Last time the receptionists were unable to offer her a consultants appointment and had to pass a message to the consultant's secretary. A week or more passed and no appointment letter. My wife spoke to the secretary and was given an appointment over the phone and told the letter is already in the post.
Another week and no letter. My wife spoke to the secretary again.
The NHS Trust has a paper saving exercise. !
The secretary does not have a printer - she has to go down the corridor, log into a printer , collect the letter, return to her office and put it into post. Her log-on times out after 4 hours. If she sends my wife a letter close to the end of that time it might not print.
The letters she has had warn of missing appointments , costing the NHS Trust money and her going down the waiting list. We seem to have a situation where my wife can be penalised for missing an appointment that was in a letter she didn't get and may even not have been printed, let alone sent.
How does this save paper ? Why can't the secretary have a printer or desk - cost say £50 (or less)?
email apparently is not secure.
Never pay on an estimated bill
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Comments
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I worked at a hospital in an IT depot and the rule, which is pretty common in the NHS, is that printers are networked and centrally managed via print servers. Unless it is connected to specialised kit then locally connected printers are frowned on as they end up taking a disproportionate amount of manhours on the maintenance side.0
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unforeseen - why does NHS consider email as unsecure - a hospital appointment is hardly a risk surely.Never pay on an estimated bill0
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My wife and I have both had problems not receiving appointment letters in the last year. I used to be a NHS manager and if I've not received a letter in a couple of weeks I call the consultants secretary and confirm an appointment over the 'phone.
If a letter comes - good; if it doesn't I ignore it.
(This from the island of my birth may make you feel better: https://www.manxforums.com/forums/index.php?/topic/65201-hospital-appoinment-reminders/)0 -
unforeseen - why does NHS consider email as unsecure - a hospital appointment is hardly a risk surely.
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.
Then you have the people who just forget to check their emails, or forget their password and can't log in, or the ones who change email addresses and may have forgotten to update it with the NHS.
Also it will never be cost effective for each receptionist for every part of a hospital having their own printer. You say it's just £50 but that is for a very basic inkjet printer not designed for the level of use a hospital needs, what you are actually talking about is £1000+ for a laser printer with the print capacity to cope with hospital level printing, then ongoing servicing and maintenance costs along with replacement toner and photoconductors, that £1000 would easily cost closer to £2000-£3000 each year, multiply that by every receptionist office in every hospital and it is a cost the NHS in its current state cannot afford. Maybe if they did that would be several cancer patients unable to relieve any treatment because the money is taken up with admin.
Some hospitals/doctors offices/ individual department do now offer a text service for appointments so it might be worth you/your wife looking into that as an option.
I get that it's frustrating but your wife was given her appointment over the phone so moaning about not getting a letter that is not even needed just seems a complete waste of time and given your current circumstances I'd assume you have far more important things to be concerned with.0 -
Manxman_in_exile wrote: »My wife and I have both had problems not receiving appointment letters in the last year. I used to be a NHS manager and if I've not received a letter in a couple of weeks I call the consultants secretary and confirm an appointment over the 'phone.
If a letter comes - good; if it doesn't I ignore it.
(This from the island of my birth may make you feel better: https://www.manxforums.com/forums/index.php?/topic/65201-hospital-appoinment-reminders/)
That's all very well if you are expecting a letter - what if its for something you don't expect.Never pay on an estimated bill0 -
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Our local trust will use email, but only on an oncology support level. Appointments generally made in person with letter as back up. Other facets of the NHS up here use the text service. If there looks to be a foul up on the cards (like the two conflicting texts I got in the last couple of days, then I always ring - if not for my own sanity then to make sure I'm not inadvertently sitting on an appointment that someone else could use.
My own bugbear though is 'no caller id' - our local trust use this to call me, generally don't leave a message, and it can take me days to figure out who called, why, and if it was important
Why am I in this handcart and where are we going ?0 -
Sounds like a secretary who needs some training in time management and possibly some capability assessment if she isn't doing the basics of the job.0
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That's all very well if you are expecting a letter - what if its for something you don't expect.
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.0
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