WIBU to still show up to the hospital appointment?

[Cockapoosforlife]

I have a long term health condition which impacts my life considerably, with a sizeable impact on my vision. I have had a hospital appointment scheduled for a while to review the conditions impact on my eyes and to decide if surgery is necessary, this was to take place tomorrow morning. I have just had notice from my mother who I haven’t lived with for a while that this appointment has been cancelled.

WIBU to still attend as they did not inform me and this is the only time I can do the appointment for a long time?

For context I work in quite a high pressure field with my work scheduled far in advance (think 5 years). It also involves working across multiple countries and time zones, to reschedule would place substantial delays on projects. For the appointment to also not go ahead it poses a considerably high chance of total vision loss, as well as raising the risk of unplanned surgery.

Well done for going in.

I hope all the people telling you 'of course you won't be seen' and calling you arrogant and entitled will apologise to you.

I would hope so but they probably won’t, I’m used to it by now anyways 🤷🏻‍♀️

It’s a shame to hear this happening multiple times, the amount that this must be costing the NHS in miscommunication is astounding.

Glad you went in and were seen @Cockapoosforlife I agree the cost, both personal and monetary, of shit shows like this must be staggering.

I'm glad you were seen. If you had not gone you would have received a DNA letter. then you would have phoned them and told them that you received a cancellation message and could you have a new appointment....at which time common sense would have failed and you would have been told to see your GP to get a new appointment..... (I can see myself bashing my head off a brick wall in these situations)

Very glad to hear you got seen OP. Sounds as if you got a little progress with discussion of surgery etc.

Well of course Op was seen if her appointment hadn't been cancelled!

If it had been who knows?

If she had been able to check by phone that would have helped!

I'm pleased you went!

A cynical person might wonder how many people get wrong messages from the NHS and how it improves waiting list numbers.

I had one appointment cancelled at the check in desk by them printing me a letter and handing it to me.

DH had a beauty. Referred back to a major London Teaching hospital as he had gone back out of rythmn 9 years after his previous catheter ablation. Short notice appointment, didn't recognise the name of the Consultant/Professor but knew there were several cardio-physiologists .
Both of us went down to London, paying full price for a peak time train ticket. Got there, sat for 3 hours in Out Patients, weighed , measured, BP, ECG etc. done . Finally saw the man- who shook our hands, then said, "I can only apolgise Mr and Mrs May2 , I have been trying to find out why you have been booked into my clinic as I am a plumber, you need an electrician! We have had some new admin staff booking appointments and they have booked you in to the first available slot in a Cardiology Clinic, they need some training about types of cardiology clinics." He dictated a letter to the correct colleague for an emergency appointment there and then, but DH still needed to chase for an appointment.
I get that he probably should have checked the speciality of the Consultant but he shouldn't have needed to.

You CAN turn up, but you'd be wasting your time.

Your failure to update your address, or your mum to inform you of things in a timely fashion, isn't the hospitals fault.

Phone the hospital first thing, explain, but it won't get you anywhere, other than rescheduled.

And honestly, no ones job is THAT important that a quick hospital appointment is going to truly jeopardize your work. Presumably the world doesn't collapse when you take annual leave? Same thing applies.

"I was booked in for an eye appointment three months after the previous one. The letter never came. I ran out of the unusual eye drops only the consultant could prescribe. I pushed hard then after six months. My consultant admitted admin had booted me off the list. She said unless I'm in the red zone 4-6 weeks between appointments this may happen. So next time push. She wrote in my notes urgent and I've had a further appointment at the six weeks limit.

Unfortunately I had to go to their casualty yesterday because the eye issues worsened at the weekend. I'm guessing it's under the knife again in April."

It's a bit of a nightmare when you can only call a general booking number. In my case the NHS paid for an "urgent" MRI scan which was indeed done within 2 weeks then becasue someone from admin decided that I didn't need the follow up appointment, it's now a year old and given how badly my knee deteriorated in the year before there's no knowing what to's like now and the surgeon has given me options based on his clinical assessment of my knee and my pain levels rather than the now innacurate MRI which cost the NHS about £1300 (according to NICE) which is now pointless.

I don't blame the admin people - I'm sure they're doing the best they can in the dark but it's madness that consultants can't mark your file in some way to say "don't cancel without my personal approval" or similar.

I won't get into the nightmare of trying get a physio appointment (ordered by consultant) - I never did. It was impossible to find anyone to chase.

And yet, she was seen.

Hospitals do make cockups despite patients diligently changing their details.

For a while, my phone number was being used for DH’s contact with one hospital. It was their error entirely of course.

Also, when my mum lived in a care home and we were still selling her house a hospital letter addressed to the woman across the corridor in the care home was sent to my mum’s house. There was no connection between the two women, so either the GP or hospital (my mum was also a patient of the same hospital) had made a bizarre error.

Read the full chain before replying @zingally. She was seen AND the hospital admitted that the cancellation was sent in error and the appointment was not cancelled!

Maybe Mum was given as next of kin?

YESSS! Fantastic news. As some people have said, you had nothing to lose by going. Worst that would have happened would be they told you to leave and they cannot see you!

Some people are all 'meh, she is making other people wait longer by 'being pushy' and insisting on being seen la la la.' IGNORE.

I know 2 people who work in Orthopedic Care and funnily enough an Eye Care Department (in hospitals in my county.) They have told me that some days they have 8 people due in the morning - 8.30am appointments through to 1pm... roughly 40 minutes each. And some days they have as many as 3 or 4 out of the 8 due NOT TURNING UP. (Complete 'no-show' ... No call or message to say they're not coming.... ) Sometimes 2 together, and the staff and Specialists are all sat there twiddling their thumbs wondering if said patients are coming.

Some patients are up to an hour late! Often traffic, late buses etc, but sometimes under-estimating how long the journey takes. Sometimes a patient rings at 6pm the night before and leaves a message on the answerphone - or emails - and cancels the appointment the next day for 11am, when it's pretty much too late to get anyone to fill it.

Anyway, tl;dr, Just turning up after an appointment has been cancelled the night before, can sometimes work out, as some appointments are cancelled because of overbooking/too many patients... (And some don't turn up so they can sometimes fit you in!)

Even so yours @Cockapoosforlife was not cancelled anyway. So I'm so pleased for you!

The 'how dare you go, you entitled shit!' posters should be apologising now. But we know they won't.

Off topic slightly...

I was on the list for a specialist appointment in mid 2021, and was told I could wait a year. I asked to be put onto a cancellation list and said I can come anytime at a minute's notice, probably 90% of the time. 4 weeks after my referral, and 11 months before I was expecting to be seen, I got a call at 7.30pm this one Monday night, and a woman from the hospital, asked if I was able to make it the next day at 11.15am, as someone had just cancelled. But yeah, as I said, some people CBA to even let them know.

'

I was one of the people saying she wouldn’t be seen - from experience. Because my appointment WAS cancelled and I was turned away, even though I hadn’t received the letter or text. I don’t think it was arrogant or entitled for her to turn up, but it was sheer luck that the text was in error and the appointment still stood.

OP

I've not read all of the pages but don't just show up as you wont get far.

I have an important appt, moved to the week after

Possibly call the sevretary and see what he or she says.

She showed up and was seen, the text was an error.

I’m glad you were seen!

I felt dreadful last November when I was called by a specialist TMJ clinic that has a huge wait to ask if i was on my way in. Because the appointment they’d rescheduled multiple times; & I’d double-checked with someone on the phone was suddenly showing up again in November AND February due to an error… apparently hadn’t been cancelled (or had uncancelled itself) & I was very much expected to be there. It did sound as if I wasn’t the only person to have had that issue; but wasting a slot in a such an oversubscribed clinic, even though I couldn’t help it, felt awful.

How annoying for you that you aren’t just booked to see either a specific consultant/Professor or just A consultant, rather than having to bounce between junior-of-unknown-level & then the consultant. It must make your appointment take far more time than booking you in directly with a consultant. The Trust that manages most of my care books patients with complex health needs to see their named consultant - rather than one of their team - to avoid precisely this issue & to keep our appointments to a sensible length. They deal with lots of very unwell people, obviously, no idea what their threshold is for consultant-led [continuity of] care, but it’s worth seeing if it can be facilitated where you’re treated. You having your file put in the the consultant’s pile (or whatever the electronic equivalent of that is) is a better use of everyone’s resources.

Don’t feel you have to say “yes” to letting everyone & the cat examine you etc, either. You’re allowed to say “I’d like to discuss this without an audience” &/or to say that you’re not on for being used as a teaching aid on this occasion. I’m quite literally used by the world expert in one of my conditions to illustrate one aspect of it & when I was well enough to do it was sometimes a “living question” for RCP exams. I also actively encourage anyone around who wants to learn about them to feel my unaccessed portacath & watch it be accessed during routine uses. If I’m really unwell, though, I can’t cope with that many people, & it’s ok to say that you’re a person not a teaching aid. We’re roughly of an age, so please don’t misunderstand my saying I wish I’d been more assertive about it when I was younger; & it might be that you’re already quite assertive enough & doing only what you’re happy with. Just from knowing how hard it can be to say “actually, no, I’d prefer not to have an audience while discussing this potentially life-shaping thing” & knowing a reminder can be useful I thought it worth saying.

I get that reading an entire thread can be a chore, but if you just read the OP's updates you might be able to get the gist.

Maybe if we had some decent employment rights in this country OP wouldnt be so worried.

And if these employers dont want their employees to be at the whims of the NHS and their timetable OR at the whims of landlords and housing associations then pay your employees enough so that they can a. go private and b. afford to buy their own home.

So pleased you got seen OP and hope that whatever treatment you receive is successful.
We have had two instances of poor admin in our family just recently. The first one was when I was down for a number of tests. I was booked in by different departments on the same day for a neck ultrasound. (i.e. two separate appointments). Obviously, I only needed one and so it was a waste of an appointment slot. (Emergency appointment so no time to check beforehand).
Second was for DGD. She and her partner lived with us for a year three years ago yet the letter for her MRI appointment came to our address. ( Luckily, I could hand this onto her in time) This, despite the fact that the appointment was raised by her current GP at her current address.
However, in both instances, I have to commend the NHS on their treatment, just admin. slip-ups.
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Your appointment has been cancelled. The only up side to turning up, is face-to-face contact with admin staff who are trying to help you and everyone else. Your appointment hasn't been given to someone else. Medical staff involved are either ill, have died or facing family emergencies. Or the premises or equipment are unusable.

You should certainly call and verify that the appointment is canceled, then reschedule.

Ha ha ha. Glad you got seen. I'm sorry but this is funny given the thread content and the 150+ posters telling you not to go. Glad you were seen.