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?

It really annoys me when the NHS, council etc do this - there seems to be an attitude of "well, if you need us then you cant possibly have anything else going on thats anywhere near as important" and they chop and change appointments around and let things massively overrun as a matter of course because where else are you going to go if you dont like it?

The idea that someone might be ill or pregnant AND have a full-time job that they cant just wander away from as and when seems to be regarded as a massive inconvenience.

But what if they've had 10 emergency scans to book in the last few days? Maybe they didnt have plenty of time to phone patients who already have appointments? An antenatal clinic is in the unique position of having routine scans booked alongside emergency scans, all of which need to take place within a specific timeframe. A certain amount of overbooking could acccomodate these patients but it's a risk and could backfire if all patients turn up. But what's the alternative? There's no where else to see these patients but they have to be seen.

Like I said, they should have phoned the OP to rearrange but the cancellation of the appointment itself may have been completely unavoidable.

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

I have been phoned when an NHS appointment has needed to be cancelled for my medical condition at short notice. Unless there are a huge number of cancellations every day that shouldn't be an onerous time-consuming task. There seems to be an attitude that because employers have to give women on maternity leave time off for appointments, that they do not need any consideration. This attitude stinks as whether or not employers have to give time off, if it means that their employee has let them down they are less likely to look upon that employee favourably in the future. This kind of thing doesn't help women's prospects in the workplace once they have children.

dont blame the minions/receptionists. they are just doing their job under strict timelines. with managers breathing down their necks demanding time and motion studies.
by all means go to PALS, nothign wrong with getting it out in the open.

The alternative is you let people know in enough time to do something about it.

Letters take 2-3 days to arrive. Heaven knows how long sending the letters out was on someone's "to do list" befire then.

As a pp said they wouldn't know about emergencies or no shows til the day/time it happened. So nothing that they new a week before hand explains being over booked

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

Why is it that my hairdresser can set up an automated texting system, but the NHS can't?

Oh Christ, time and motion studies were the absolute bane of my life when I was in acute

Fwiw (and I'm sorry to derail the thread a bit) I think there is too much red tape and too many targets. Because of these, more managers are needed, clinical staff need to divert more time to paperwork and away from patient care, and those at the front line are put under ridiculous, unworkable pressure.

Some areas already have Gloria, but the roll out is like everything else: slow

Fwiw (and I'm sorry to derail the thread a bit) I think there is too much red tape and too many targets. Because of these, more managers are needed, clinical staff need to divert more time to paperwork and away from patient care, and those at the front line are put under ridiculous, unworkable pressure

ABsolutely

I am surprised that letters are still sent out regarding appointments. There are lots of quicker and newer ways of communicating that they could use!

Giles, letters generally take longer than that. Staff are usually prohibited from sending anything 1st class, even if there is an emergency and all other forms of contact have failed.

Allegretto, the data protection act (and inherent systemic errors in the sending, storing and recording of secure and accurate information, including that relating to consent) make other forms of communication very difficult.

But I wholeheartedly agree.

Try thinking of the NHS as being 1-2 decades behind other industries and you've got a pretty accurate sense of what it's like.

But all emergencies have a knock on effect because routine patients can't just be bumped a few weeks, they too have to be seen within a certain time frame. So it may be necessary to do a mass move of patients, moving them a couple of days each.

Having used my letter just now for my hospital number, I can confirm it was dated Friday 28th meaning that it arrived Saturday - to my mind that isn't a reasonable time frame for a Tuesday appointment, taking into account the bank holiday?

Anyway, I called again to follow up with the sister, and I asked whether I could be given a date next week (Any date, Monday to Friday) as that gives me enough notice to rearrange my own diary without looking incredibly shit at time keeping in front of clients.

I assume 21weeks is still within the time frame for 20week scan and that I won't be compromising any tests by doing it a week later? I'm waiting for them to call back and confirm.

Why couldn't they have just called or emailed me in the first place. They have all my details?

21 weeks will be fine Frilly.

They should have contacted you by phone, but remember that staff aren't supposed to leave messages with any "real" information (not supposed to even reveal that they are calling from a hospital) and without your written consent specifying what they can/can't communicate, they can't email.

The whole system is so much more (needlessly) complex than the public realise. I really wish that there was some form of national service for school leavers where they spent a month working in the NHS

They should have called you and any complaint you make should focus on this (but if this was done last thing on Friday, they may not have had a chance?)

They can't email you (or my Trust can't) as it's not a secure form of communication and so does not comply with data protection rules (I'm not sure of the ins and outs but that's the reason we're given. We do send texts though).

And yes, you can't leave voice mail either and text reminders have to be opted in to. You could ask them if they have such a service at your Trust.

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.

It's not down to budget cuts. I had exactly the same problems when I was pregnant with my now-adult DC.
The NHS is fantastic in a crisis but hopeless at day-to-day management. Always has been.

It's because of the security of particular email addresses cowbag.

NHS.net to NHS.net (and I think that the latest upgrade has ensured that between NHS.co.uk addresses and NHS.co.uk to NHS.net are now ok) but an NHS address to, for example, gmail.com or btinternet.com, can't be guaranteed to be secure from the non NHS end. Therefore they can't be used send information to unless you have the patient's specific written position.

Permission, not position

Senua it's even worse now. Trust me, it's the worst it has ever, ever seen it and I've not met anyone who disagrees. Budget cuts are a huge, massive problem- especially as there are so many targets and policies that many organisations are spending extraordinary amounts of management consultants trying to find a way through the quagmire. And this diverts funds away from where it is really needed. Complete false economy.

Congratulations on your pregnancy, OP - I do hope you have managed to get a private appointment for the anomaly scan within the right time frame for your pregnancy, and that all is well for you.
I think you've been given too hard a time on here for your original post, and I don't think you were being unreasonable in expecting a long scheduled appointment not to be postponed to another day at extremely short notice. I would have been furious were I in your shoes. I remember many years ago, receiving an appointment for a smear, by post, a week after the date of the appointment - it is ridiculous that the NHS relies on the post for these things. Most people have mobile phones nowadays, why can't changes be sent via text, with a number to ring if the new appointment is is inconvenient? Or ditto, email? I've lived abroad for 26 years now and am astounded by the low bar which is being set for the NHS by many of the posters here. Just because it is badly run doesn't mean you should accept this, nor expect it to be so.

Call and check.

I had an appointment booked for about the 2 week checkup - I'd already been told Sunday but the date was Monday, and sorted that out, but then when I turned up, it seemed that both were wrong, and the clinic didn't even run that day, and I had to come another day again.

Basically, these appointments can be completely up the creek, and you can get a different answer every time you ask. Give them a ring, see what they say.

You've had an incredibly hard time here OP.

I nearly fell over from shock when I got a random call from another NHS service a couple of weeks ago, offering me an annual review. I was even more shocked when they said they were offering appointments either 2, or 3 days later. Ridiculous - not everyone can rearrange work that quickly. I'm lucky, I work in a flexible job and one of those days happened to be one where I work from home anyway, and the service is local to me, so I was able to drop everything and run up the road for half an hour but to do that, and then berate the public for not taking it up is ridiculous.

Oh, and in my last pregnancy, the midwife at my GP asked me to come in early, before appointments, as she really wanted to see me, and she didn't have any appointments that day. Except she then forgot, wandered in 20 minutes late for her actual first appointment, left me sitting in Reception with my then 10 month old for over an hour. During the appointment she was incredibly rude, and not for the first time. No excuse for it. I didn't see her again.

The NHS is experiencing a massive funding crisis, resources are ridiculously stretched - Jeremy Hunt is a bastard, but engaging in practices which are just going to make the problem worse, is not helpful. And sending out a letter on a Friday, for a change in appt on a bank holiday Tuesday is incredibly bad practice.

I hope you manage to get seen soon.

Giles, letters generally take longer than that. Staff are usually prohibited from sending anything 1st class, even if there is an emergency and all other forms of contact have failed

So, when you attend your appointment and you are sat staring at the posters telling you how much money was lost as a result of patients who failed to attend theirs, can we safely now assume that a significant proportion of these people quite possibly had no idea the appointment even existed?