NHS rule about being late?

I don't know what happened and tbf none of us on here do. I am just relating my experience of both 17yos and physio outpatients...

@Gettingbysomehow would you say that the hospital transport is a key factor in the delay? Has this ever been attempted to be tackled to get to the root of the problem?

A lot of the time its not our patients fault. Many of them qualify for hospital transport and hospital transport is always an hour late. We cant just refuse to see them and quite often they have sepsis and have to be admitted which isnt a 5 minute job.
The problem is then that it makes us very late and a lot of the people waiting then get very abusive often violent even when we do our best to explain. Ive had chairs thrown at me before when a cardiac arrest in my clinic made me 2 hours late. We dont work on the hospital premises so we have to call 999 and do the initial resus.
It amazes me that people cant cut us a bit of slack under these circumstances.

@Neurodiversitydoctor so you are saying if he really was 5 mins late then, what, the alleged "1-minute" rule wouldn't have applied?
He'd still have been past this rule's deadline if he was 90 seconds late or 15 mins - either way, appointment cancelled, wait a month.

I am sure you trust your son OP but I know 17yo's 5 minutes. It is likely it was the last appointment if 40 minutes after school....physios have children to collect from nursery too. My guess is he arrived at 16:13 for a 16:00 appointment with a physio who finishes work @ 16:30. Next time get him to leave school 30 minutes earlier.

We won't not see people if we can help it as the scans they are attending for are very time critical and important. If someone is late we will accommodate them as much as we can. This then means we work through our lunch break and leave late. We do run late with our clinics frequently due to the sensitive nature of the scans we do and we want to make sure any questions are answered.

Someone posted about respect missing in the NHS it works both ways. We have had people turn up and hour late and kick off because we really couldn't find another slot for them. We have had people turn up half an hour late with no apology or care what being late causes. Others dont even bother turning up and then kick off when we say we can't see them for another two weeks.

Blimey that’s harsh. If we are running late ourselves we will see whoever’s waiting and so long as clinic is running we will accommodate late arrivals as we can. If you’re in the last patient slot you have 15 mins (as we build in a delay for XR/plaster room).

To be fair though all they will do is a short assessment, give him some pre printed exercises that you could get off you tube and send him home, it’s all they ever seem to do!!

I think if he was genuinely 5 mins late for a 30 minutes appointment it's awful they didn't see him. Where I work we do publicise that if you are more than 10 mins late is the discretion of the HCP if you are seen. But as most appointments are 30 minutes if someone was 10 mins late you can still see them for 20 and get some therapy/ assessment or whatever is needed done? I would complain. I think they took advantage of a young person.

If every patient was 5 minutes late consistently it would be ok!

Last time I was sat waiting in outpatients for my first of the day appointment at 9am and it took until 9:40 until someone bothered to mention that the consultant was delayed because of traffic on the motorway. No, not the same thing but the point is that there has to be give and take, and why is it so hard to communicate - it makes so much difference.

I suggest you, or your son speak to PALS.

The receptionist was being more thn unreasonable and just like other people have said on here, the NHS can keep people waiting a long time to be seen.

The department may well have had a policy change, or the receptionist was having a bad dogs day but pals should be able to help you and your son with this.

Dd used to see the eye clinic. We were always early- never seen on time. Our most memorable experience was when we checked in and managed to watch an entire Disney film before a nurse appeared and asked why we were there as the consultant was on holiday.
Shame the receptionist hadn't mentioned that when she booked us in.

He went from school! Think it was inflexible and jobsworth of them to refuse appointment for sake of 5 minutes. Even if he had left earlier, there are many reasons for being late etc traffic works, accident etc.

@Ceci693 that's ridiculous.

There are rules then there is lacking all common sense.

If someone is late you see if the next person is there to be seen early. Then if the late person then arrives they can be seen after.

And given the appointment was more than 5 minutes long then when couldn't he have just had 5 minutes less of physio?

They will now have to spend admin time sending letters/emails out again.

Personally I'd put in a complaint.

Why do you think that is?

Possibly (definitely) to do with patients turning up late and expecting to be fitted in?

This is not a blanket rule. I used to work in a healthcare setting with child patients who were very poorly and in a city center. Our families were often late, even though they had the best intentions because wheelchairs and the Tube etc. are a nightmare. We would allow them to wait and see if we could fit them in, or call an early patient on sooner to allow them some grace. We were all happy to do this as it felt like the kind and human thing to do, and actually it was easier on us than letting the whole appointment time go to waste and have to rebook them anyway. Obviously we have a service to run and even if the family did their best and we couldn't see them they setimes had to go home again without being seen. This seems either unnecessarily strict, or poorly communicated or the receptionist went rogue. I would speak to pals for clarity on the policy, I wouldn't go in guns on blazing but just for future reference as the way it was handed seems very strict and your son was upset.

Fair enough but he still needs to be on time without excuses.

It seems very high-handed for receptionists to send people away like that when they arrive with the majority of the allocated appointment time remaining. And I don't see how it benefits the NHS in any way if it simply means an additional appointment has to be booked.

This seems to be the norm unfortunately now, my daughter has regular hospital appointments, one time we were late due to building works in the hospital, I was unaware so we had to trek around the whole building to get to where we were going and we were late by 5 mins. If the closures weren't in place we would've been 5 mins early!

And we got told we'd missed our appointment and would need to rebook! Baring in mind, every time (and we've been doing this for 17 years now!) we have to wait 30+ mins for our appointment!!

Thankfully our consultant who again we've had for 17 years, phoned me a few mins after and saw us! Receptionist really are above thier pay grade in some places!

it seems very harsh to not allow him 5 mins, but if the physio had already been held up several times that day for different things it might be that they just couldn’t allow any more grace. Not necessarily fair!

But if the OP's DS arrived five minutes after his scheduled appointment and the physio is running, say, ten minutes late then that doesn't make the physio run any later than he was already.

I think both you and your son are being unreasonable.
You are both not taking the appointment seriously. You should arrive 10 minutes early for appointments and allow time if you don’t know the layout of where you are going.
As a parent, I would have gone with a 17 year old.

He was late, should have left earlier surely.

No physio or medical person would say you're bumped after one minute. He may not be lying but his memory of the time might be off. In any department of any hospital I've ever been to including physio, they say after 15 mins we may not/will not see you.

Just double check it online. It must be on their website, the physio and rehab team. Or ring the receptionist. I'd say I'd be absolutely shocked if it was really one minute!