poor communications from hospitals

I received a message telling me I had an appointment with a consultant. I only saw it be chance I was expecting a letter or possibly an email ( I rarely use my phone). I had told them I was going to be away from home for the whole of September but I still got my daughter to check my mail every few days. Thankfully I was able to cancel the appointment ( I tried to do it on the internet but it wasn’t possible). I had told them phone as soon as they opened on Monday morning just the day before the appointment. Came very close to getting a dna.

Snap! OnFriday we received a letter for a hospital appointment Monday (tomorrow) morning.
It told us to contact them if we were unable to make it so they could offer someone else the appointment! I don’t think so as nobody there at weekends. Absolutely hopeless.

…..I actually had a sleepless night when I noticed the message late on the Saturday night. I have checked back to find an earlier notification but couldn’t find one…

Maybee I felt for you reading this post.

This is happening everywhere - a friend received an irate phone call from a hospital for not confirming attendance for a scan, she had no idea it had been booked. The letter with the scan appointment arrived a week after the appointment.

I was told by my local hospital to register on their portal because all my appointments would be on there. It was fairly straightforward but it did make me think about digital discrimination, plus I have to remember to check for appointments for an ongoing problem…

MayBee70

I received a message telling me I had an appointment with a consultant. I only saw it be chance I was expecting a letter or possibly an email ( I rarely use my phone). I had told them I was going to be away from home for the whole of September but I still got my daughter to check my mail every few days. Thankfully I was able to cancel the appointment ( I tried to do it on the internet but it wasn’t possible). I had told them phone as soon as they opened on Monday morning just the day before the appointment. Came very close to getting a dna.

It's all text appointments now in my area...which I prefer....you then have the option to cancel and/or rearrange via text....we also get reminders almost daily in the last week before the appointment..

My DH has had several medical appointments in the last year or so. Most if not pre booked come through by text with numerous reminders.
I think odd ones if far in advance come by letter but considering the state of our postal service it is probably not the most reliable way

And this so called service is costing £280 Billion a year.
It’s not a service 😡 and the tax payer isn’t getting value for money.

Under the ‘Patients Know Best’ initiative all our letters are emailed to us now. We get an alert and simply logged on to read the communications. These can be printed too if the recipient wants a hard copy.

We get a text message to access an appointment letter which can be downloaded. If the letter is not accessed a paper copy will be sent but as has been pointed out here often arrived very close to the appointment. Now we are familiar with the process we download and if needed for records print of a copy of the letter. Previously we often received two copies of the same appointment letter which always seemed such a waste of time and money.

I have to give a big tick for our local public hospital. My husband was a patient recently and since his discharge they have organised physio, homehelp, podiatry, balance classes, garden assistance and all without us nagging them. Unlike the private hospitals who take your money and don’t have any follow up at all. Moral is, keep off private health guys !

Astitchintime

Under the ‘Patients Know Best’ initiative all our letters are emailed to us now. We get an alert and simply logged on to read the communications. These can be printed too if the recipient wants a hard copy.

That’s where my letters were. Unfortunately I didn’t know about it and wasn’t registered with it anyway. Because my last appointment was sent by letter I assumed the next one would be. I didn’t even realise they had my mobile number.

long waits then they expect you to jump to it. it was ok when i had a partner who drove but like previous poster said community needs a weeks notice. hospital transport is more or less impossible to get so i have no choice but to cancel. not ideal when you have waited 18 months for the appointment.
years ago i do not remember it being this difficult to get appointments or such long waiting lists

I hope you got to the hospital without too much pain and stress madeleine.

Just had a message from my daughter to say the appointment letter for last Tuesday must have arrived after she checked the mail a few days prior to that date. It was dated 9 September but didn’t arrive till @ 18th. Appt was for 22nd.

Is it at all possible to ring the hospital, explain the circumstances and ask to change the appointment?

We arrived early at the hospital for my husband’s appointment. At the appointed time we were informed that the appointment had been cancelled! On our way out of the hospital I had a text saying it was cancelled! And a week later a letter to inform us that it was cancelled! You couldn’t make it up!

My local hospital will usually phone if the appointment is for less than 3 weeks time. If longer they’ll send a letter.
I’ve already had a letter with an appointment for March 2027!

I have got the NHS App on my phone. All of my appointments go through to the app, as well as by post. This is a really convenient service as both GP and hospitals use it. You get a notification when you have a message.

Don't get me started, my optician sent a referral for the eye hospital in July, cloudy corneas, As I hadn't had any communication from them by the end of August, I phoned the number given on the text I'd received about which hospital I wanted and all they could tell me was they had received the referral to the hospital and I ws to phone the Hospital on the 17th September and they gave me the number to ring. I dutifully phoned the number which turned out not to be the hospital but they put me through to the hospital. All I wanted to know was if they could give me a timescale for when I might get an appointment, she blithely told me that they hadn't even triaged the referral which they'd had since July and she couldn't tell me when the likelihood of that would be. I'm dreading them sending me a letter by post as it would not come in time by current standards, the last post received was on the 4th September, 3 and a half weeks ago!

Also my Gp referred me tfor an MRI in July I almost immediately received a text from the provider saying before I could have the urgent MRI I would need to attend an assessment first, and to phone somebody else for an appointment. I did and I got the first available appointment which was mid October. Then last week I received a text from the hospital to phone them about an appoinment which I did and they did the MRI the following day. So I phoned the provider the following day and said that I wasn't sure what I needed to go for an assessment as I had already had the MRI. All they could tell me was they weren't sure what the appointment was for either and to attend anyway. So I now have to drive 30 miles just to find out if I should be there or not. There is certainly no communication between the call centre for the health care provider and the hospitals and me. With everything having to go through a private company third party before it actually gets to the hospitals we need to get an appointment at, things get missed, it's like Chinese whispers and delays everything.

Hospitals are sending letters 2nd class to save money ad many of them are in financial difficulty. What hapoens after they're posted is out of their hands and in the hands of the short-staffed Royal Mail. Not all hospital departments are able to text or e-mail patients with appointments due to their systems being not set up for this facility. The NHS is under more stress than people realise. It is what it is.

What is the difference between the NHS App and Patients Know Best? I think my earlier appointment was on one of them but, as I’d been waiting months for an appointment I wasn’t looking on them.

A coroner has blamed a woman’s death on bad record keeping at my local hospital.
And my Dr looks at me in horror when I tell him I’d have to be dying before I go in there again 🤬

www.echo-news.co.uk/news/26589855.southend-hospital-warning-poor-record-keeping-death/

This bad record keeping has reminded me that a friend has a case going on against this hospital.
On his notes there is an entry for an injection given after he was dead

I get a text message with a link. I then have to put in my personal details to an unknown web page (something we are told NEVER to do) and download a pdf document, which will not open on my phone, so I have to attach this to my email or messenger to open on my laptop, just to find out the date/time which they COULD have sent in the message. Then, with some departments, I get an email, then a week later, it comes by post.

A friend recently told me that some of these hospital appointment letters are prepared in India! If that’s true, no wonder they’re received very close to the appointment or almost too late!