More chaotic/time-wasting NHS admin

i won't start on the catatlogue of admin problems we have dealt with over the last few years.

All I will do is absolutely agree with you Witzend

All I will do is recount what happened in the private sector recently. I saw a specialist who commissioned some tests. he gave me the link for booking them and said' ring my secretary when you have the date and we will arrange for you to see me two weeks later'.

I followed the link, which listed available dates. booked one, rang the secretary, we discussed possible dates and I told her when we would be away - and a day later my appointment email arrived. It is 3 weeks later rather than two.

The system that did this, does not require expensive resources, the second part of it could easily be computer based and as simple as booking the tests.

Why are simple efficient working systems like this not the standrd in the NHS?

This is frustrating and stressful to deal with, particularly when you're not well and have health concerns. The admin staff will also have to deal with these patients too, so it's stressful for them too.

I had a letter from the eye clinic telling me that as I hadn't turned up for my last appointment they were returning me to my GP and closing my case. I hadn't received any news of any appointments. When I phoned them they didn't even question it, just booked me an appointment two weeks away.

I think they had too many outstanding appointments and just decided to clear the decks and wait to see who phoned them to question the letter.

We frequently get 2 or even 3 copies of the same letter in separate envelopes about appointments or cancellations. We used to complain but it seems the norm now. What a waste of money.

Same here, Primrose53. I was given a card with the dates of 5 future appointments to put in my diary. Then I received 5 separate letters, one for each appointment. Also inside each envelope was an instruction sheet telling me how to get to the hospital and another sheet containing yet more blurb which I immediately put in the recycling. Multiply me by goodness knows how many others like me and I dread to think how much all this is costing.

My optician referred me to the hospital eye clinic. A 6 month wait he said. It was 18 months. I went to my appointment. No need to see the consultant, apparently but they would like to see me in 4 months time. If no appointment was forthcoming, please ring. No appointment so I rang. Not even on the list yet. ‘Go to see your optician’ I was told, and what? Start all over again ?

I find these complaints about the NHS rather tedious.. Just be glad we have one. Yes, you may have to wait a few months for a routine operation. My friend who had an urgent heart condition, was rushed to a top London hospital, because there were neither beds nor expertise, in the local hospital. His life was saved. Try living in a country, where your survival depends on your wealth

crazyH

I find these complaints about the NHS rather tedious.. Just be glad we have one. Yes, you may have to wait a few months for a routine operation. My friend who had an urgent heart condition, was rushed to a top London hospital, because there were neither beds nor expertise, in the local hospital. His life was saved. Try living in a country, where your survival depends on your wealth

I tottally disagree crazyH. All of us pay taxes, a substantial amount of which are paid to the NHS to provide us with an efficient health service. Many of us have used the NHS very little when we were under 60 or 70, so when we need it, we expect it to be there.

This thread is not about the quality of treatment it is aabout the inefficiency of the booking systems.

Perhaps if the booking systems worked quickly and efficiently there would be less spent on it and the money saved could be spent on treating people.

In most countries people pay into health insurance schemes, which is, in principle is no different to paying into a nationally run system through our taxation.

Maybe largely their antiquated computer systems which seem to cost the earth and constantly fail. I think the NHS finds it hard to recruit Good IT people who are prepared to stay the course until a new set-up is bedded in.

Perhaps they use Fujitsu.

The other thing not to be fooled bout and could conceivably result in missing appointments, is that you have to change your address in EVERY DIFFERENT DEPARTMENT!

You can't just tell your GP, or even every different hospital, it just doesn't update it!

£11bn in 2011, £2.1bn in 2021 and a further £900m in 2023 and IT system failures have been linked to the deaths of three patients and more than 100 instances of serious harm at NHS hospital trusts in England.

A Freedom of Information request also found 200,000 medical letters had gone unsent due to widespread problems with NHS computer systems.

More than 24,000 letters from Newcastle hospitals had not been sent and more than 400,000 letters had got lost in computer systems at hospitals in Nottingham.

The failure by hospitals to send out letters to GPs and patients could mean anything from an appointment to a cancer diagnosis or change of medication being missed.

Prof McDonald says the current roll-out of electronic patient records across trusts is “a broken jigsaw” because very few are able to connect with each other, making information sharing a real challenge.

He also believes there are echoes of the Horizon scandal at the Post Office.

“There is undoubtedly a culture of cover-up in the NHS and nowhere is that stronger than in the health IT sector," he added.

“It’s not safe. It’s really not safe" A ticking time bomb ...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4nn0vl2e78o

The NHS in C21st Britain ...

^ Just be glad we have one. ^

But if you can't see a doctor, or get an appointment with a consultant then you haven't really got a service have you? At least, not until you become an emergency.

I’m glad we have the NHS, but that doesn’t mean we can’t draw attention to gross inefficiency and waste when we see it, or that we should just meekly accept substandard treatment or outcomes or very long waits.
My GP referred me for a hearing assessment last September.
Nothing happened & when I rang up, the Newcastle Hospitals Trust Booking Service had no record of the referral.
In February my GP referred me again, with a request that I be seen urgently.
I got a letter this time & it said if I hadn’t heard anything by April to ring up.
I rang up in April & was told I’d be seen in June.
June came & went, I rang again & was told they were now booking referrals made in November 23.

I now have a problem in that my travel insurance has been suspended because I’m awaiting an assessment.
I rang again today & was told that despite my doctor requesting an urgent referral, I was on the routine waiting list.

I have actually seen the referral letter because it’s in the documents section in the NHS app. I told the person on the other end this & remarked that someone must have chosen to ignore this. The person said she couldn’t possibly comment.

So yes I’m glad we have the NHS but I wish that dealing with it wasn’t so stressful.

crazyH

I find these complaints about the NHS rather tedious.. Just be glad we have one. Yes, you may have to wait a few months for a routine operation. My friend who had an urgent heart condition, was rushed to a top London hospital, because there were neither beds nor expertise, in the local hospital. His life was saved. Try living in a country, where your survival depends on your wealth

As someone who was very ill with pneumonia and pleurisy last year, I was profoundly grateful for the excellent care I received, from the time the ambulance arrived and blue-lighted me in, until I was finally discharged 3 weeks later. Might add that I was grateful enough to make a fairly hefty donation to the hospital charity.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t feel profoundly irritated by chaotic admin that means both time and money are wasted. As I said, it’s not by any means the first time. Dh was previously sent to the wrong clinic for a minor surgical procedure - several miles from the one he should have attended, so that was his time, the surgeon’s time, and that appointment wasted.

As a trauma nurse said to me too much of what turns out right is more luck than judgment
Maybe when the NHS is governed by Drs and not accountants it might just work for all of us

I could fill the whole forum up with admin/communication errors.
It's a constant battle to try and keep abreast of medication changes, tapering on and off, phoning to ask why medication s are missing from my prescriptions when I have informed them on the app, phoned, and they have had letters to confirm.

I also liase between three different consultants in two different hospitals.

I have a huge folder full of paperwork to try and keep on top of it all.

If the NHS was managed by accountants, proper trained accountants, the admin system would work well.

Accountants cannot be blamed when DH is sent to A&E by our GP. We turn up, they say his name is on the computer and tell us to sit down. We do for two hours, in an almost empty waiting room. I finally put on my humblest Uriah Heap persona and ask , ever so nicely, when we are likely to be seen, the nurse looked at me blankly, ask the name, I give it, more blank looks, they go to the computer and discover, that we hadn't been booked in properly, so no one knew we were there.

To be fair when they realsied what had happened the jumped to it and DH was seen pdq, all the same, if it wasn't that I am naturally assertive and will go and ask, DH, was embarrassed about it, we could have been there all night and longer, just waiting.

A few days ago DW received her routine c ops of the latest letter from her consultant to her GP. The content was entirely accurate, but in the letter heading the date of consultation was wrong , and the date the letter was written predated the consultation.

On the brighter side, the on-line booking system for blood tests, etc. works a treat, as does the checking-in system at the relevant clinics.

The treatment is exemplary.

Oops! c ops should be copies.

Our GP surgery website used to have a section where you could Send the Practice A Message (non medical). I have used it in the past. Today I spent half an hour looking for it to no avail. It has vanished.

It clearly says on the ansafone that you can leave them a message on their site! i am sick of pointing errors and omissions out to them.

last week the sign-in screen told us to go to waiting area B. Sat there ages, went back to reception who said we should be in area A.

I received two online appointments and two letters for the same date and time. I am on an eye trial but there was no mention of that stating I would be there about 2 hours- wrong it is usually close to 6. After all of that, it was cancelled and undoubtedly it will be the same performance again. What a waste of time, money and effort.

The NHS has excellent central IT teams, my son is one of them. They are recognised as experts in their field. However, each hospital trust is free not to use them as is each GP service. They tend to go for private companies. Hence, no consistency across the country. The GPs don't know how things should work and what is available, so are buying from private salesmen from a variety of companies, much like headteachers who are not IT savvy (I know from experience). Had the central teams been used, crises like ransom viruses are much less likely to have occurred because they would have been better protected. And the cost would be much less. It is very frustrating for said IT teams.

My DH has turned up for appointments only to find that he has apparently been sent a letter cancelling them. Also been told he's missed an appointment for which he never received a letter. We've also had some letters cancelling appointments that we didn't know about at all. No wonder so many expensive appointments are wasted, lengthening the waiting lists.
His old hospital (where this happened) apparently didn't type their own letters but had them done elsewhere. This almost resulted in him being automatically discharged despite the fact that he has had heart failure for eight years.
When we moved house and advised the old hospital and the new GP he was referred to the new hospital and never allocated to a consultant. Our GP is great however and made sure that he had all the requisite blood tests until they had sorted themselves our.

I just wish they’d all link up to a basic but robust system. No bells and whistles. Maybe take a leaf out of systems abroad that work well as we seem too fragmented and frankly rubbish at procurement. Ditto for the Armed Forces. Wastage of huge amounts of taxpayers money. It is so frustrating isn’t it?