Do I have the right to know my mother's medical arrangements?

There are two POAs, one for finance and one for health. When we did ours we were told the health one was not really necessary because in the event things would be decided mostly on the advice of doctors etc and not on the advice of relatives with POA. Not sure if relevant here but it does not seem to have been mentioned.

Confidential Information is information provided by a hospital, GP surgery, by patients and members of staff about themselves and/or their health care. This information has been given with the expectation it will be kept secret, secure and not shared with staff or anyone else not involved with the patient's care.

Any patient information is confidential e.g:
Name
date of birth
address/ telephone number
Appointment date and or time
Reason for or details of treatment.

Confidential information cannot be used or shared with anyone who is not involved with the care of the patient.

So giving away appointment details to someone not involved in the care of the patient (and even then has to have patient's consent unless a specific exclusion) is a breach that should be reported. The hospital's PALS department should take it seriously, but if you don't trust them to pass it on, complain to the Chief Executive, you will be able to find their name by googling the trust.

They had no right to contact you, it would have been better for them to contact your mother's surgery (involved in her care, so okay) and ask them to try and contact her.

Who gave the hospital your telephone number & how did they know who you were?

I work in a GP surgery. If your mother has not given express consent that you can be contacted about any aspect of her care, what you describe is quite simply a breach of confidentiality.

Doodledog has left the discussion, as so many people appear not to have read the thread!
I must say, I agree.

I am inclined to agree this is a breach of patient confidentiality. In this instance, a letter addressed to the patient the right approach. Unfortunately, administrative staff in hospitals and doctors’ surgeries constantly make decisions inappropriate to their role. The lack of respect for a patient because of an arbitrary age on a medical record commonplace.

My hospital never leave messages, even their calls come up "caller withheld" they don't seem to get the fact that if they do this the patient may not pick up the phone and the message will not be received ever, quite difficult

Hospitals and GP surgeries withhold their number because they don't want you to call them back, they want you to go through the switchboard!

Not commonplace sparkling, patient confidentiality is very important in GP surgeries and any off the staff breaching this are disciplined. It can be very annoying for family members who wish to discuss their relative (our patient) but we have to politely tell them to obtain their consent.

If you’re expecting a call from the hospital/GP, best to pick the phone up.

When I receive hospital phone calls ( different hospitals) they all start with the same generic 0800 number, which I have saved on my phone.
I know right away then if it is a medical call and not a scam.

Automated phone calls always ask for a Yes or No answer to confirm my name. If you say No , you can't proceed.

Have you got a Lasting Power of Attorney Welfare (LPA- welfare) or do you only have an LPA for finance? If you do have the welfare one then look in Section 5 has your mother authorised it to start immediately or only when she is not compos mentis.

You may have the EPA the enduring power of attorney (new one no longer issued) which will not yet have been registered because you mother has capacity.

All public services have a duty of care and if an elderly person cannot be contacted it is right to check out with the second telephone number on the form what the positions is. And as others have said giving away as little personal information as is suitable for the enquiry.

Forgot to say the ~EPA is only for finance not welfare so have no rights to know about health etc.

I'm sorry I dont get your anger .if you're mothere had fallen downstairs and been unable to answer her own phone would you prefer they just waited until she was had been there for days before they thought to contact someone about not being able to contact her?
That exact thing happened to my mother ,she was lying in her back garden with a badly broken leg ,neighbours on holiday and no one who could see her .When her GP surgery called and got no answer they called me.I went down and got her the ambulance she needed.She spent 7 weeks in hospital .Just be grateful someone cared enough to let you know she was unavailable.They didn't give any information as far as I can see from your OP.

I have PoA for DH and the local surgery quite properly had to scan it into their records before allowing me to deal with his medical issues with them. The same happened with dealing with his Parkinson’s consultant. It does make life much safer for him if I deal with it all especially since he probably wouldn’t remember what had been said,

I know I said that I was leaving the conversation, but as it is clear that people are still not reading the thread, I will try once again to spell out my position:

* I am not angry.

* I am not feeling inconvenienced by any of this, and do not want to stop being NOK.

* The fact that I have POA is not, in this case, relevant to the situation, as my mother is in full possession of her faculties. I mentioned it for completeness, and pointed out in the OP that it was not really relevant, but really wish I hadn't, as despite my repeating this over and over it keeps getting dragged back into the discussion.

* The receptionist had been unable to contact my mother for a matter of minutes when she called me, so there was no reason to assume that she had met with disaster.

* My concern (not anger, not a gripe, not a complaint, but a concern) was/is for my mother's right to confidentiality, to which I think she is entitled despite being 86. It is for her to decide whether or not to disclose her medical details to her daughters, as well as when to do this. She had intended to tell my sister and I after she had the results of her tests, so that we would not worry.

* I realise that 'no harm was done' to my mother, but the point is that it could have been if that policy were used to contact people who had good reason to keep private the fact that they were consulting a doctor.

* The message was left on a landline answerphone which was picked up by my husband, and could have been accidentally played in front of other people - it was in no way a private message.

* If I sound frustrated it is less with the situation than with the fact that I am repeating myself over and over, but the same points and questions keep coming back.

I hope that clears up my position and answers (again) the questions that people have continued to ask .

PS. She has had the tests and got the all clear, so all's well that ends well.

Well, Doodledog, maybe people will read the thread now, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Glad your mum’s okay.

Doodledog I admire your patience and I’m also glad your mother is alright.

I share your frustration at people not reading the thread, or at the very least, the OP before they post.
This morning I took the trouble to quote a poem in full ( on the growing old disgracefully thread) only to come back to the thread and find someone else had also quoted it about 15 minutes later ?

Yes, I saw that. It is maddening, yet whenever the topic of thread reading comes up (as it frequently does as an AIBU) it is assumed by some that it is an unreasonable request.

I think thread-reading is important if only to stop annoying repetition and misunderstandings.

I don't understand why people don't understand the principles involved and the potential for harm in some situations.

Why does it bother people if what they've said is repeated by someone else? Do people really think that no-one else will think the same as them?

Also, what is wrong with just answering the OP? Why should that only be available to the first one or two commenters and then every subsequent poster be required to read everyone else's posts? That's essentially what people are expecting when they say others must read the whole thread. I think that's unreasonable.

An OP like the one on this thread is quite enough to be answering by itself.

Baggs Why does it bother people if what they've said is repeated by someone else? Do people really think that no-one else will think the same as them?

Of course not. But it’s courteous to acknowledge that someone else has already had the same thought as you, and that you agree with them.
Or, if you post something and someone else’s similar post has appeared while you were busy composing yours, to add ‘crossed posts’.
Or, if it’s a very long thread with many pages which you haven’t had time to read, to preface your post with ‘not read the whole thread but’ in case someone else has already made the same point as you.
Just good manners, really.

My point is this, janea: is it discourteous to respond to an OP that has plenty of meat in it without reading the responses of other people? I don't think it is. Not on a casual chat forum. It might be on scientific paper terms but Gransnet isn't in that category.

Furthermore chatting on a thread on Gransnet is not the same as chatting with a group of people in the same room.

It is from reading some (relatively few and, admittedly, not recently) threads on Mumsnet that I've come to these conclusions. It appeared to be common practice, especially on AIBU threads, for people to mainly just reply to the OP. That, in my view, is not rude.

I agree about your crossed posts comment IF you happen to notice. Moving away from your screen (for whatever multifarious reason) after pressing 'Post' and not noticing that you post has crossed with another saying the same thing is not discourteous. You might as well complain about "being ignored" when it's nothing of the kind. Which, as I'm sure you know, some people have done.