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Yes tis a farce. I tried to choose and book an appointment for dd. None available - called consultants secretary who told me that they weren't booked as such, just blocked. So she had to unblock an appointment and book it for me. What is the point?
It's crap isn't it. Ds2 needed a referral to the local eye hospital (Bristol) - we live about 2 miles from it. So GP said very scathingly 'in the good old days I could just have done it now, but in these days of technology you are able to CHOOSE to have an appointment there...' (she REALLY hated the system). So had to then wait a further half hour till receptionist was ready, sat with her for half an hour while computer system refused to co-operate, eventually she gave up, said 'I'll phone you this afternoon, we can do it over the phone'. She phoned (5 mins before I had to leave to pick kids up from school), computer still playing up, AT LAST it worked, and bloody eye hospital wasn't an option, was given the option of going to Stroud - 25 miles away....so she went off, asked GP what to do, GP booked us in in the normal way by phoning them up!
Adds 4-5 mins onto a consultation-would so much rather spend that time talking to the patient about the reason they've come And then, can't even get an appointment straight away, you will be phoned back in 2 weeks is admin speak for we are fiddling our waiting lists [ggrrrrrgh] Choice most people want to go local as well
DH had this problem about a year ago. He was referred to a consultant and when he rang choose and book the computers were "down" and as it was a Friday they said to call back next tuesday. He called back on the following tues day and guess what, the computers were still "down". They said the hospital would get in touch within 2 wks but they didnt. So he rang choose and book again and this time the computers were working but we had wasted almost 3 weeks for nothing. VERY ANNOYING
The GPs hate it! I had trouble getting DS an Orthpaedic appt a few months ago, and had to go back to the GP to re-input it as urgent. Then I had 2 bookings on the system & they kept telling me I had not booked one!
Once I got an appt with a long waiting time, I got the C&B people to give me the hospitals own booking line, and you can keep calling for cancellations.
In the end though, as we were soo worried, we paid for a private consulation with the consultant we were waiting for on the NHS, and he put DS to the top of his NHS list and had him in the MRI scanner & results back all within a week of the private consultaion!
Same thing happened to me Southeastastra. Choose and book online said no appts. Rang them up and they said they would write to the hospital and I would hear in two weeks. I kept getting reminder letters saying that I hadn't booked my appt and kept ringing them up to have them say that I would hear from the hospital soon.
Four months later I eventually rang the hospital direct to discover that they had never received the referral! If I were you I would contact the hospital or consultant's secretary direct and then go back to your GP if they haven't got your referral.
In principle choose and book seems like such a good idea......
You should be able to ring the appointment line direct. I got the number from my GP but you can probably get it from the hospital switchboard. However, they simply advised me to speak to the consultant's secretary which I did and she was great and sorted it all out for me. Do you know the name of the person you have been referred to?
I would call your GP if I were you. He/she will be able to tell you the name of the consultant and then you can contact their secretary directly. Or, they may be able to advise you of the best thing to do.
My four month delay seems to have caused some damage to my heart ECG in December at the doctor's was normal but when I finally saw the cardiologist last month a subsequent ECG was abnormal and suggested my heart was enlarged.
Yet another shit money-wasting government initiative, thinly veiled as 'choice' when it is anything of the sort.
A waste of money. A waste of time in consultations when I would rather be talking to my patients. A waste of my paient's time in trying to book a bloody appointment.
You could ring the consultant's secretary to check that it has definitely been received. I have known referrals go mysteriously missing in the computer system.
Or you can ask your GP's secretary to check on the system for you. That is pretty straightforward to do.
I wasn't particularly satisfied with C&B either in my experiences as a patient. Wrong clinic, cancelled appointments, no referral letter received. It really is useless.
gp is referring me to ortho hand surgeon. Saw her last monday when she tried to put it into system. System wasn't playing with her. So she said she would send paperwork by post. Didn't arrive friday so I had to phone and chase as she asked me to.
Paperwork arrived today. Went on to website. GP had given me a choice of two clinics. Both came up with 'There are no available appointments at this time. Please ring xxxxx ' So I phoned up the number to be told 'we only have the same information as is on the internet.' Then she said that she could pass on my details to the hospital. That would take up to two weeks. If I don't hear in two weeks contact gp.
Anyway I've left a message for my gp who is in tomorrow because frankly I don't trust the system to work.
darrellrivers - I expect you are right about it partly being a way to fiddle waiting lists. Hosp waiting list average for ortho is 17 days according website. Bloody joke!
I am just going through the very same thing with the choose & book system for my dd.
She's now been waiting several months for an "urgent" appointment. They are now denying that they ever had the referral. I know they had it, but it seems that dd isn't on the waiting list now. How convenient for them... she vanishes off the list as they have breached national waiting time guidelines
Can I just say from the perspective of an admin person who books waiting lists for the NHS, it is really crap on this side of it too. We are constantly being harassed by management for failing to meet their breach targets, when the theatre list are cancelled at short notice for all sorts of reasons, lack of staff, lack of surgeon, lack of equipment, infection, etc etc. Where I work we have closed a local hospital which had a complete Day Theatre unit which had 4 theatres and could accomodate overnight stays. We still have to be able to date the increasing number of patients into smaller amounts of perating time and beds. Anyway, my dd is an orthopaedic patient too, and I completely understand your frustrations, as we are going through it too. Just don't give up, keep nagging and eventually you will get through to someone who can hopefully sort things out.
I'm a medical secretary and I'm expected, by management to comply with C&B when booking clinics.
However, I do my own thing because C&B is a pile of crap. My computer is too old and slow to cope with it.
I find I only have a waiting list for new patients of 2 to 3 weeks because all the local GPs know me and my consultant boss will take proper, old fashion letters or faxes as referral. I book them in gaps in a proper, old fashioned paper diary.
I then put them on the computer AFTER I've spoken to the patient and agreed an appointment date.
God that sounds more complicated than it is. But.. result... easy to manage for me and my consultant boss and happy patients.
<<<sshhh.. don't tell management or I'll be sacked>>>
Moon - I'm a med sec and agree C&B a lot of codswallop! Is your hospital doing the medical secretary review at the moment? (Getting rid of med secs and rebanding).
It is a crap system - I am trying to locate an othopaedic surgeon in my area. The website does not give the name of the consultant or which procedures they tend ot favour /how much experience they have in this particular surgery. Although I could gauge some basic info on a consultant if I found out the name and they also had a private clinic. The procedure is key for bunion surgery where there are over 100 different procedures but ortho surgeons tend favour a smaller ranger within that. Have spend two weeks compiling ortho surgeon names by ringing hospitals not all of whom were keen on giving out the names. Why? barely any had details on the the internet on the hospital site. I ended up paying £2 for two hours on a specialist medical database - i presume used by sales people to identify the majority of the names of the ortho consultants across this area. There are at least 6 hospitals within 30 mins of me. I am now about to email all of them. I emailed one two weeks ago and got no response so not overly confident.
Vev... They did a study into whether it would be cost effective to outsource med secs. It would be in the short term, when the outsourcing companies are quoting 2p a line for typing. But once med secs are all sacked and the hospital's contract with the outsourcing company comes up for renewal, the price goes up to around £1 a line. The hospital is then forced to pay as all their ex-med secs have found other employment.
I believe that Choose and Book is part of bigger plot to get rid of med secs, outpatient clerks etc. I think we will see patients having no contact at all with a consultant via a secretary and all calls will be handled by foreign call centres. This is a worry for our psychiatric patients, who often ring me expressing suicidal ideas, having panic attacks, needing urgent advice about medication etc. I can spend hours on the phone calming distressed patients, many of whom I have known years. A call centre would only be interested in getting them off the line. I can see deaths occurring.
There are also issues with confidentiality since a typist in India threatened to post patients' details on the internet unless the hospital paid her a couple of million dollars. The outsourcing staff are very badly paid and are often qualified nurses and doctors in their own countries. So, using them as typists is taking skilled people out of their own hospitals, meaning patients in India are getting a worse service.
Its a huge area for debate. I went to medical secretaries' conference at Unison headquarters in London last year to discuss this with med secs from all over the country. Unison have produced a pack they can let you have if you feel your job is under threat in your hospital.
Gosh.. that was long... didn't really mean to go off on such a rant.
Moon - thanks for your reply. The med sec review is going on at present in our Trust and no-one seems to no anything or be able to tell us anything and we have been told by our managers there'll be a roadshow at the end of the month making things clearer. Do you know of any trust's where they've actually outsourced med secs?
Think we'll have to get on to Unison for a copy of their pack.
I'm a med sec too, but currently working on an inpatient unit as a bed manager (and I mean manager literally - I manage the waiting list and admissions).
My sister is also a med sec and all their typing is outsourced to India. She says when it comes back they have to add punctuation, make the layout readable as it comes back as one paragraph (and if your new patient letters are anything like the ones I used to type when I worked for a Trick Cyclist Moon, they're 5-6 pages long!), and make corrections. She says it would be easier to do it themselves.
Surfermum - thanks for that - we'll have to look into the BMS. Has your sister been rebanded or is she still on a band 4? We didn't know that some trust's had outsourced their typing. Don't know how it can work efficiently.
They were given band 3 under AFC - but appealed and are now band 4's. Outrageous that they were considered only to be band 3. I've worked as a med sec and I've worked for a manger (hated it) and there was just no comparison between the levels of responsibility.
I just don't get why the role of medical secretaries is so misunderstood.
Just want to add a huge hooray for medical secretaries. I'm a consultant physician. Our secs all went through the review last year with much opposition from consultants. There were a few vol redundancies and lots of reorganising of work. Sadly has left admin staff v demoralised. Management have no idea how vital med secs are and how holistic your role is. Now they're changing our printers so we all have to waddle off to some central printer to collect anything we've printed. Will lead to more gaps & mishaps. Bloody madness
To all of you who are trying to use the NHS rather than working in it - believe me, we're doing the best we can but in the face of loads of nonsense, very little common sense.
And don't even get me started on C&B..
<sorry about hijack OP, hope you find your way into the system. If struggling badly letter to MP often makes hospital take notice>
I purposely put myself forward to sit on the matching panels for A4C as I was worried the med secs would get shafted. Luckily I got us all a Band 4 but it was hard graft trying to describe what a med sec did to HR people and managers who think we are just a fecking typing pool
I think Addenbrooks outsourced about 2 years ago and now trying to re-recruit med secs and get out of their contract with the outsourcing company.
What I heard from the Unison med sec meeting was that a lot of places are sacking 70% of med secs, making the rest Band 2 clerk typists who sit all day correcting outsourced letters, adding the patient details, GP address and signature block.
If you are Unison members, contact your local rep or regional centre and ask them for advice, posters, info packs etc. I know the name of the main man at central office, but I don't want to post his name on here really.
Thanks for your support Nappies. Our consultants have been told to keep out of it and they won't be listened to anyway 'cos what's happenings happening!
It is hard to understand why the role of med secs is so misunderstood - the way I see it'll all implode on itself. I think it's a start to get rid of the NHS altogether!
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I eventually rang the hospital direct to discover that they had never received the referral! If I were you I would contact the hospital or consultant's secretary direct and then go back to your GP if they haven't got your referral.
