To ignore the letter I've received from the hospital?

[Frillyhorseyknickers]

After my 12 week scan I booked an appointment with the reception for my 20 week scan, for tomorrow.

We've just come home from bank holiday away and I received a letter either Friday or Saturday stating a different day (the day after) for my scan.

I was really miffed because I'd been looking forward to my scan (first pregnancy) and my diary is full now for the next few weeks. I had kept tomorrow afternoon free for the scan, but otherwise I am between four offices and I can't just free up a few hours at short notice.

My DH says we should go to the appointment tomorrow as booked and just discard the letter and deny all knowledge of it.

I feel really bad about doing that as it's NHS and they are obviously busy. DHs point is that we booked the appointment weeks ago, they have given us less than one working day's notice of the change and they are taking the piss.

WIBU to just turn up to the appointment I had arranged prior to this letter?

I think most people would accept a delay or a bump off if an emergency came in.

I've been that person in the waiting room waiting to find out if I'd miscarried or not. And I'd be amongst the first to reception to 're book if that happemed or id wait.

I wouldn't expect to fall victim to over subscription nonsense and lose and appointment for having the nerve to actually want to turn up for it.

The NHS is under funded. There are too many managers. They wouldnt look kindly on NHS staff ringing to rearrange appointments, with the best will in the world

If that's the reason then it would be worth contacting the service manager with PALS and possibly the chief of service cc'd in to let them know what has happened.

Unfortunately it sounds, once again, that policies have been put into action where they aren't really compatible with good patient care. Overbooking for a 20 week scan seems farcical- why would they do that? There just doesn't seem to be any sense to it?

It's pretty rubbish that the receptionist couldn't reschedule an appointment when you rang up. You can't be the first woman who's been unable to make the appointment time offered. You'd think that the receptionist would be able to make other appointments without referring it to the sister.

Writing to patients is also an unhelpful policy for rearranging appointments at such short notice. They may not want to call patients and get into conversations about why's and when's, but you'd think that they'd consider alternatives like text messages as well as the letters.

I second the PALS route. It's not acceptable. I also second a PP who asked how everyone would've reacted if you'd been in a low wage job/on benefits and had booked tickets to get there etc.

It's not on IMHO

sounds like the Sister is in charge. standard practice perhaps

Tbf op if you weren't in a position to go private you'd just have done what everyone else does and rearrange your schedule to attend the appointment you've been given. It's the cash and staff strapped NHS not a nice day out to a health spa!

Or she may well have not been able to afford to get to the appointment after having to shell out for two lots of childcare and travel and gone without scan altogether or in trouble with her boss for mucking them about

FlyingElbows you're right it's not a trip to the health spa. They're not so dim as to overbook their treatment rooms or sessions are they. D'oh.
Why are you and others having s go at someone who hasn't done a damn thing wrong?

Or, more likely FlyingElbows. She'd have had to not attend the last minute appointment and have to wait until another can be made meaning the 20 week appointment wasn't done til 24/25 weeks.

Not many people can change their work schedules with just one day notice and it isn't really fair to expect businesses and work places to have to take the extra expenses really either.

Funny how it's too expensive and time expensive for the hospital to make a phone call. But the patients are expected to suck up the expenses of double the time off of self employed, double travel expenses the phone bills from rearranging their and everyone else's shifts and the childcare and are unreasonable of they don't

Makes you wonder how many appointments are missed because people can't be bothered vs how many are missed and costing the service such money as a no show due to admin errors meaning wrong info is sent out.

My mother nearly missed an appointment once as she was on holiday and they rescheduled for while she was still away and she only got the news in time to cancel as id popped round to check on the house and found the letter.

FlyingElbows

I'm really quite fed up of posters being rude to me so kindly, fuck off.

I'm well aware it's not a health spa, what a mindlessly stupid comparison. I would be surprised if the majority of people with any commitments could rearrange an appointment at such short notice but that is by the by - I have already explained that I simply can't. Just because one industry thinks that is an acceptable time scale to rearrange an appointment doesn't mean I can do the same to my clients and expect repeat business!

I'm now in the office with a clear diary all day and now in the frustrating position where I am twiddling my thumbs waiting for my colleague to come in so I can make use of the day for work.

Thank you to everyone for constructive advice - I will look into complaining about this.

OP let us know if you get a private scan booked and please do take heed of PrettyFly's post indicating the tight timescale.

I also agree with some on this thread that in part, it is one of the (many) adjustments that one makes in first time motherhood. I had similar situations in pg, and it was really honestly stressful moving from a situation with clear priorities (I am the breadwinner, I pay the mortgage so work comes first) to having competing priorities (if I don't come to work it will look really bad but on the other hans, DD is sick). It is tough!

That said, the hospital were at fault. They should text or phone at such short notice, and instead of making a complaint maybe you could feed that suggestion back to them.

Things like this hit poor and vulnerable people hardest. I live in a deprived area and once had to wait 4 hours at an obstetric clinic. Totally umderstand why and it was fine for me with my cushty professional job and understanding right-on employers. Not so much the woman next to me who was on a zero hours contract and had a shift starting soon. She was really stressed as she had already called in sick the previous week and thought they might just let her go if she was late, and she was saving up to properly fund mat leave for herself.

But I'm sure she was just an entitled madam.....

Xpost!

They overbook clinics to try and maximise efficiency when you have patients not attending, cancelling late etc. Obviously this doesn't always work according to plan but they're doing it to try and squeeze more patients in, not be awakward.

Also consider, your clinic is fully booked for the next 4 weeks (which is very conservative imho) and then a patient comes in who needs weekly scanning, or you get several patients who need emergency appointments. Where do you expect them to go? Should the sonographers just work all night to see everyone? Of course people end up having to be moved. Then you have sickness, planned and unplanned leave etc.

Changes in appointments are very rarely due to a lack of organisation. It's just the system's way of flexing to meet demand. The only thing they have done wrong is not trying to call you when the cancellation was such short noticr.

Them overbooking shouldn't be the patients problem.

Penalizing people for actually turning up. It's ridiculous.

And why are people not offered cancellations?

You can't expect people to be sympathetic towards bad policies that screw people over when the people doing it don't extend any thought to what a person might have to go through just to get to the appointment in the first place.

I'm pretty surprised at the bad time the OP has gotten here.

We all know a few NHS angels, but there's no doubt that it's a poorly managed organisation. The left hand does not know what the right hand is up to.

If they were able to communicate better with patients (EMAIL! TEXT!) imagine how many fewer missed appointments there would be?

It's like it's still 1950 in NHS World. I went to Charing Cross A&E very early Saturday morning for a UTI, which I suspected was a recurrence of one I'd had two months previous. Here was my exchange with my doctor:

Me: 'I had a urine culture two months ago. Can you check that before you decide on my antibiotic?'

Doctor: 'No, I can't see it in the system'.

She writes me my script.

Me: 'What if it's the same UTI? This is the same antibiotic I took last time.'

Doctor: 'Take a sample to your GP on Tuesday.

Me: 'I'd need to take the sample now, and you can store one for only 24 hours. That won't work.'

Doctor: 'I don't know what to tell you.'

What can you even say about a system that will pay to culture a urine sample, but no one can access the results apart from the GP?

At some point people are going to actually have to be seen and not be some mass of appointments permanently shifted around

Cowbag if clinics are deliberately overbooked to compensate for DNA rates then the way to manage this is NOT to just send letters cancelling existing appointments at the eleventh hour. Creating overdemand in a system and not managing expectation is disgraceful and not acceptable just because it's the NHS and it's overstretched.
If too many appointments turn out to have been booked then clinic needs to phone people in plenty of time to see if they can actually make another appointment. I suspect the clinics are often over booked or half empty if this sort of thing happens.

It's really bad practice and not fair on patients or staff, and the irony being that I expect this lady's scan clinic has at least one DNA today.

If the clinic was overbooked to compensate for do not attends or last minute cancellations, then why would OPs appointment have been cancelled last week?

The hospital can't have known last week whether patients would simply not bother turning up today, or whether they'd ring at 9am today saying they can't make it.

You could be cutting off your nose to spite your face. There's a reason why you've got this letter and no matter how annoying it is, you know that ignoring the letter isn't the right thing to do.

Congrats on you PG OP.

Unfortunately you are going to spend the next few months or so being a mere number in a massive system of maternity.
While the individual people you see will probably be lovely, the maternity health system really treats you like a number and nothing more.

It is very unpleasant (well at least that was my experience in London).

You need to find some resilience and your own way to generate inner calm though it all.

OP you have two issues there

• the NHS and the quality of the service that yes isn't good at all. Unfortunately, it's not down to the NHS itself but down to the budget cuts. Best thing to do about that is to avoid voting Conservative and be involved in protecting the NHS (a real NHS, not what we are l ft with nowdays)
• whether you can or cannot take time off work. I have been there, feeling that not honouring the appointments I had taken was very unprofessional. Feeling that I would let people down etc etc. So I use to do the same than you. That was until I got ill from running myself down by putting everyone else first before me.

This is an important scan for you, the one when they are looking for abnormalities and any other problem. It is ESSENTIAL for you and the baby that you attend the scan. Don't let an appointment with work go in between you and that scan/health. Some things can be organised in advance and some don't. As it happens, you can't plan for a date set in stone with the NHS so you need to plan that into your own plan re pregnancy and work.

• Also remember that once you have a child, there will be many more times when you will need to cancel some appointment at the last minute (e.g. Appointment with a GP, child being off sick etc...). It's a good practice run to see how you can get organise around that! :)