NHS wasting money

This is false logic. The main cost of the NHS is manpower. The main risk is missing people or having no shows. If an unmanned system churns out a few errors in a system where “bureaucracy” has been cut (ie proper efficiency rendered less likely) it is a lot cheaper than someone cross checking millions of records. Posts like this make me despair

Used to work for the local NHS in Accounts. Seen first hand, to my astonishment, the lack of efficiency, communication and antiquated systems/procedures the admin staff were still using. Far worse than my previous job before I returned to work after years of child rearing! And the previous job was civil service who are hardly trailblazers themselves! About time for a change but, as we know to our cost, the NHS seems highly resistant to it in certain areas.

For those working in the NHS and those of us who spent our lives working in NHS we know there is a vast amount of waste in all areas .
Money alone will not solve the problems. It is true the police and ambulance crews should not be spending hours with mental health issues .We need a better system for these people who need specialist care. Care in the community is very often non existent for these patients and whilst committing them to homes was certainly not the answer we must provide a workable alternative . The conception of the NHS in 1948 was hailed by Bevan as "a great and novel undertaking"certainly was and still is

I've been complaining about getting NHS letters for years and suggesting they could easily give us the chance to have emailed letters.

Thankfully, here in Birmingham they do seem to have started emailing appointment letters (received one on Friday), but I'm just waiting to see the paper one drop through the letterbox any day now so I can complain about receiving both when I go to my appointment.

As for sending letters for inappropriate things, they've been just sending everything to everyone for years. I'm just waiting for the day that my son gets a letter telling him he needs a smear test!

Maybe they'll get it right, eventually.

No doubt mistakes happen but I've never had an NHS communication that wasn't accurate or timeously delivered and I've had lots at my age. We ought to worry more about the underfunding of the NHS and the shortage of doctors, nurses and other professionals which this government seems unable to address. It's not postage stamps but £millions needed.

nandad

*Growstuff *- that’s interesting and sounds like what has happened in my sons case. I don’t think it’s a case of mistaken identity. I know from various appointments I have had recently that I may or may not receive a text reminder, some may appear in my online medical records and some can be accessed by some other departments. There is no consistency.
What I will be doing next week is to find out if appointment letters can be sent out via email, I have never been given the choice.

I suspect they won't send letters by email due to concerns about email security.

However, whenever I have any new communication (letter, results, appointment) on MyChart I receive an email to tell me that the notification is there and asking me to log in securely.

I get text reminders of GP or nurse appointments at my local medical centre, but after DH died I received a proper hand written condolences card from them! I could hardly believe it, but I was pleased to get it.

When we lived nearer to London we were often at A&E with my father. In the waiting area was a huge piece of artwork. I commented to one of the nurses about it and she said it cost many thousands.

Nearby was the art college, surely they could have got the students to produce something towards their course work, but of course it was better to waste money.

FishandChips you described it perfectly and when I posted my comment I realised you had remarked upon the same waste of paper! Sorry about that. On a much worse financial level, when I lived in London the local hospital was given a face lift (solid wood bannisters on all staircases, complete redecoration and refit of a vast reception area) and when I remarked upon it a nurse said what a waste of time it was as the hosptial was to be demolished. This particular health authority had also built two new wards at the side of the hospital which never opened - one was used as a drop in centre for about a year and then they too were demolished. Whoever sanctioned this appalling waste of millions should have been sacked, but of course that never happens, and we can probably multiply that kind of waste all over the country.

An example of the non-joined up thinking in communication where my dd works is with translation services. The area she works in is very multicultural and they have patients who speak many different languages but little-to-no English. Human translators can’t be available 24/7 so the Trust invested a lot of money in a languages app. However, they didn’t check that it worked with the IT system the hospitals use and it is therefore unusable.

It can work with some phones but staff are not permitted to use their own phones due to patient confidentiality rules. It makes life very complex for both staff and patients, not to mention the potential for inadvertent errors and the waste of money.

growstuff

MerylStreep

If the NHS had a decent/ up to date/ working IT system it would/ could be more efficient.

It certainly would, but (see above), the NHS doesn't exist as a single body.

My thoughts exactly. We've proved just on this thread that differences around the country mean we are not discussing "one" system currently in operation and there are huge differences as to delivery..

Locally I've been mostly very pleased with the way I've been referred and informed - a mixture of computer and letters. but that's because I have agreed to this form of communication. Test results sent directly to me including outcomes at the same time as GP gets it - details of follow up in same letter - text reminders for all appointments

- generally only letters when there are forms to be filled in with the letter or special instructions like dont eat, only bring in x and y, contact z if you need to change appointment etc. (which is presumably cheaper than missed appointments?)

But I'm aware some people can't manage the computer email and passcode to letter bit and need that bit of paper.

I have no doubt there is a lot of inefficiency in places and that needs to be addressed, but mainly I have very sympathy for stretched admin, desperate patients, complex mix of NHS/private.

No doubt a lot of it is down to how good the management/IT management is in any given place and good management and training can produce better results.

But in transition the "wasting money" is complex, because to change managers and train up admin and medical staff takes a good deal of time, and that is something they often do not have,

and it may (regrettably) in the short term be cheaper to lumber on with an older system rather than the cost of staff time involved in the changes - or the difficulty and cost in releasing staff for training etc when staff and patients alike under so much pressure.

My husband has a few health issues which are connected but involves separate depts. He very often opens his post to find duplicate letters for 3 depts. So 6 in total! He puts them on the calendar then annoyingly a few weeks later gets duplicate letters saying that the appointments have had to be cancelled or rescheduled.

Another great waste in the NHS is staff stealing stuff for their own use. My ex neighbour was a trained nurse and her kitchen cupboards were like a pharmacy! Bandages, dressings, plasters, wipes, you name it. She said it was a perk of the job and everyone she knew helped themselves.

We are supposed to get texts from our surgery informing us when our prescriptions are ready. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't. No two days are the same.

I keep getting texts from my local surgery, urging me to have the various vaccines on offer. I have spoken in person to the nurse and explained why I don't want any more, so there is no excuse for it.

MrsNemo you described the paper waste much better than me.

Nandad we too have received duplicate letters.

I feel as though this waste needs to be drawn to the attention of a senior person at the hospital, but who?

*Growstuff *- that’s interesting and sounds like what has happened in my sons case. I don’t think it’s a case of mistaken identity. I know from various appointments I have had recently that I may or may not receive a text reminder, some may appear in my online medical records and some can be accessed by some other departments. There is no consistency.
What I will be doing next week is to find out if appointment letters can be sent out via email, I have never been given the choice.

MerylStreep

If the NHS had a decent/ up to date/ working IT system it would/ could be more efficient.

It certainly would, but (see above), the NHS doesn't exist as a single body.

MerylStreep

If the NHS had a decent/ up to date/ working IT system it would/ could be more efficient.

I suspect the problem is that we don't have just one NHS. We have dozens of different providers who bid for contracts.

I tried to find out who might have been responsible for the Covid "reminder" in the OP. It seems (in England) it was ultimately the responsibility of the the UK Health Security Agency, which was only formed (after yet another reorganisation) in 2021. This agency contracted out the work to anybody who wanted to bid and they were allowed to sub-contract the work to pharmacists, GPs and some others. That's why all our experiences of booking seem to have been different.

There isn't a central database with everybody's relevant health information, especially if people have opted out of sharing. It's all fragmentary, so it sounds as though whoever was responsible responsible for the area's Covid boosters decided to play safe and send a blanket invitation to all and sundry. I expect, OP, if your son had tried to book a booster, his medical records would have been accessed via his NHS number and he wouldn't have been eligible.

This fragmentation and sense that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing has been made worse by the 2011 Act. In reality, the NHS is goodness knows how many private providers operating under the same logo.

Letters I have had recently from the out patients department of our local hospital have all consisted of two sheets of paper; the second sheet says only 'Yours sincerely, Doctor Smith' at the top of the page.
My husband had two letters from them with exactly the same paper waste. I rang them and said that if they moved the text up by two lines on the first page they could halve their printing paper bill. From the reception I received I fear they thought I was some sort of insane nuisance caller.

For almost two years we have received several letters due to my DH ongoing health problems.

Every time the letter arrives the signing off, i.e. name of Consultant, department, etc., is on a separate page. Have they not heard of adjusting the margins and then the letter, reminder, confirmation of appointment, etc. would be on one page and not two rather than wasting paper.

SuDomin
Last year I had an ECG done at my surgery. Because of the reading I was sent straight to the hospital.
The first thing they did was another ECG. Why? because their system couldn’t access my surgery.
We now have AI coming at us all ways and they can’t manage the above. Crazy.

MerylStreep

If the NHS had a decent/ up to date/ working IT system it would/ could be more efficient.

I think pigs will fly before that happens. Within the Trust my dd works in their own internal computers can’t all ‘talk’ to each other! 🤷‍♀️

Our GP practice doesn’t have any email/internet facility. They have a websit pe but you can’t do anything on it except order certain prescriptions, which may or may not be issued so you have to chase them up by phone anyway, but not the normal phone number, a different one which they don’t advertise. 😫

If the NHS had a decent/ up to date/ working IT system it would/ could be more efficient.

Most of my appointments and reminders come via text. The exception was an appointment with a hospital consultant which involved several letters.

I received this notification last year.