More NHS waste of money

Not really a big worry though NGM thought it was going to be a piece of equipment or something

That’s less than a drop in the ocean. One sheet was a covering sheet for your copy of the letter to your GP, as it wasn’t a letter to you. The other, quite rightly, told you to read it carefully. Neither sheet of paper was ‘unnecessary’.

Not a big worry? A drop in the ocean? Are you kidding?!! The NHS sends hundreds of millions of letters to patients each year - if each one of those includes 2 extra sheets of A4 which tell the patient zilch, then it's costing the taxpayer 3 times what it should in NHS paper costs (not to mention ink, electricity and office workers' time to collate them). We used to cost out paper at 1p per sheet, WAY back when, and costs haven't gone down! Do the sums, for crying out loud. Even at 1980 prices, 100,000,000 sheets at 1p = £100,000. Now treble it. Drop in the ocean, my beautifully-proportioned backside.

I received a letter from the NHS last week. It was a letter addressed to me, not a copy of a letter to someone else requiring a covering sheet or separate explanation. In fact it was a letter asking me to complete the enclosed questionnaire about my asthma to see whether I needed a review appointment (I won’t). And it didn’t enclose an SAE. Hopefully that more than balances out what you see as waste. Isn’t it pretty obvious that only a fraction of NHS letters are copies of letters to the patient’s GP with accompanying cover sheet (professional firms would use a far more expensive compliments slip) with instructions to ‘read and inwardly digest’? FGS calm down and see it in perspective.

Well I doubt if it’s happening ‘all the time’ I ve never had any spare sheets in the letters I get from NHS and I get a lot of my correspondence in emails why don’t you ask for that NGM that ll save all the paper

NonGrannyMoll

Not a big worry? A drop in the ocean? Are you kidding?!! The NHS sends hundreds of millions of letters to patients each year - if each one of those includes 2 extra sheets of A4 which tell the patient zilch, then it's costing the taxpayer 3 times what it should in NHS paper costs (not to mention ink, electricity and office workers' time to collate them). We used to cost out paper at 1p per sheet, WAY back when, and costs haven't gone down! Do the sums, for crying out loud. Even at 1980 prices, 100,000,000 sheets at 1p = £100,000. Now treble it. Drop in the ocean, my beautifully-proportioned backside.

Absolutely this! What a waste!

I never receive any letters about anything NHS-related. Everything is posted on my hospital app. A copy is sent digitally to my GP, where a clerk ensures it's entered on to my GP patient record. The only way money could be saved with the same outcome would be for the hospital notification to go directly on to my GP record without human intervention. I expect the set-up for the digitisation was expensive, but now it costs almost nothing to communicate the information to me and my GP.

PS. I doubt if any NHS Trust is paying 1p for a sheet of A4 - even now, I don't pay that for paper.

At least my hospital is making up for some of the alleged waste. Maybe we should ask for a refund.

I notice the OP talks of ‘costing out’ paper at 1p per sheet. There’s big difference between cost to buy and cost passed on. I assume she isn’t receiving correspondence from the NHS printed on vellum.

NonGranny what an excellent response. My thoughts exactly.
Remember the old saying, 'Look after the pence and the pounds will
look after themselves.