Bloody NHS

[wellinghall]

I have just (9.15am on Saturday 12 March) received a letter from St Mark's hospital in London, informing me of an appointment.


The letter was dated 9 March.
The postmark on the envelope was dated 10 March, and it was posted second class.
The appointment is for 8.30 am on Monday 14 March.

The letter asked me to ring one of two numbers if I could not attend, and said that there would be an answering machine out of hours. I have just rung both numbers, to find there was no answering machine.

The NHS really needs to get its act together.

ETA: That hospital's admin has repeatedly proved itself to be poor, even by NHS standards. A shame, because their clinical care is great.

ETA2: Thinking about it more clearly, and prompted by a friend's post on Facebook -

I can see that the process for making the appointment might well have been largely automatic from their point of view - "Give this chap the next free appointment." However, something is wrong somewhere - either in the design of the process, or in its implementation - when it neither enables me to attend that appointment, nor to let them know that I will not be able to attend.

I have received much great clinical care from the NHS (and some pretty poor care, too); and most of the time, the admin works just fine. However, there have also been occasions - particularly with this hospital - when fairly routine admin, particularly around making appointments, goes badly wrong.

Comments

[brightlywoven.livejournal.com]

"The NHS really needs to get its act together."

I understand your frustration, and this is a crap thing to happen, but the NHS is an organisation with over a million employees. A failing at one point is not representative of the entire entity, and I really wish people (you're certainly not the only or the worst culprit here) wouldn't damn the whole thing over one inconvenience. (Because after all, you will still get an appointment, and even if the answering machine were switched on, it's not as though they will be able to give the slot to someone else between now and then.)

And even if this is an intrinsic feature of the whole organisation, as I recently read, when it comes to health services, you can have good and cost effective, you have good and convenient, but you can't have good, and cost effective and convenient.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I entirely agree that I shouldn't damn the whole organisation over one incident. Unfortunately - and I know I didn't make this clear in my post - this isn't an isolated incident. That hospital, in particular, usually - and I do mean more than half the time - has some admin problem over my appointments.

[brightlywoven.livejournal.com]

yes, but the appointment makers in one hospital aren't 'the nhs'!

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Fair point.

(I seem to remember, though, you criticising UK university exam systems, and UK water, on the basis of Oxford exam systems and Oxford water).

[brightlywoven.livejournal.com]

To the first, yes, but I accepted correction when it was pointed out to me that Oxford was an outlier.
The second was based on Oxford, London, Brighton and Lakes water. And having been as far north as Edinburgh, I'm yet to have a cup of tea made from any tap water in the UK without scum on it.

[didiusjulianus.livejournal.com]

Of course they COULD have given the appointment to someone else had they sent the appointment letter in a timely manner, so it's wasting staff time and money, of which there isn't any to waste (which we are being told all the time).