Can someone who knows about NHS referrals tell me what is going on?

[Unimpressedbythisnews]

I took DS to the GP in February, although at our practice you only ever see nurses. It's impossible to see an actual GP. The nurse said she would make a hospital referral for DS. I was told it would be a while before I heard. I waited.

Then very recently DS had a related issue. We were away in another part of the country and ended up in A&E on the advice of 111.

Concerned about it happening again, I've now called the GP surgery to find out what was happening about the referral. The receptionist said she could see the 111 call and A&E visit on the system. She advised me to call the hospital and find out what was happening with the appointment.

I called the hospital and they told me the referral only came through the day after we were in A&E - 6 months after I was told it was being made, and surely prompted by this incident. I was told it would be months more until we get an appointment, unless I go back to the GP to try to get it speeded up.

What has gone on here? I'm going to complain to the GP but want to fully understand beforehand. Would the nurse have been able to make the referral or would she have had to request it via the GP? How could the referral not have been made and am I right in thinking it's no confidence that it only happened after we ended up in A&E?

I agree. When you finally get to see a qualified nurse or doctor, etc., they're usually really good, helpful, etc., but clearly worn down by the inefficiency and poor management they have to work under. Trouble is all the layers of administrators, bureaucrats and managers that "protect" them that you have to by-pass. So often, the nurse or doctor doesn't know what's gone on around them, they don't know how long you've been waiting, how many appointments have been cancelled in the past, how many times you've had to call to chase them, etc.

OH was once booked into a different hospital to see a specialist consultant and specialist nurse transplant co-ordinator re a potential bone marrow transplant. Appointment was for a Wednesday and the whole point of the appointment was to view the transplant ward facilities (as he'd be there in isolation for several weeks), for her to go through the procedures, treatment stages, etc and then introduce us to the consultant at the end of it. We turned up, waiting all morning (appt time was 9.15 and we finally got into see the consultant at 12.30), and he spent the entire appointment phoning around trying to locate the transplant co-ordinator as he had no file, just a one page referral letter from OH's haematologist. By 1.00 someone had told him the transplant co-ordinator wasn't working that day, so our entire morning was wasted and half an hour of the consultant's time was wasted! A repeat appointment came through for two months' later (remember this was for an urgent bone marrow transplant!). We spent around two hours with the transplant co-ordinator going through all the details - she didn't know about the appointment cock up two months' earlier, and explained she never worked on a Wednesday as it had been her day off for years! So was aghast that the appointments office hadn't checked that and had made the appointment for when it was on the system she didn't work Wednesdays and her online appointment diary was blocked out!

What I can't understand is why the senior nurses, doctors, consultants, etc., don't take action. It's as if they're living in a zombie land, just wandering around and doing "their bit" in a trance, without any care nor power about the administrative/management environment around them. Surely they have avenues to feed back to management about mistakes, admin cock ups, etc??