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Still no satisfactory outcome over podiatry appointments

Posted By Hollyanna

"Still no satisfactory outcome over podiatry appointments"

About: Salford Royal / General medicine

(as a service user),

This has been going on for many weeks. The podiatry service say they will be having a meeting this month in which they will discuss having a minimum notice period for rearranging appointments. However, when I asked if I would be told what the period is, they said they would not tell me, so they will be operating a rule that says patients must give x amount of notice when changing an appointment, but the patients will not know how long the notice must be! How can we keep the rules if they are kept secret from us?

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Responses

Response from Salford Royal 6 years ago
Salford Royal

Submitted on 20/06/2017 at 10:06
Published on nhs.uk at 10:30

Dear Hollyanna

Thank you for taking the time to post your comments. We are so sorry to hear about your experience with trying to get hold of our team by telephone to confirm the minimum notice period for rearranging appointments. We are disappointed as your experience does not reflect our Trust values, where we pride ourselves on our professionalism and communication skills.

To allow us to investigate this further, can I ask that you contact our Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS), on 0161 206 2003 or email them directly on pals@srft.nhs.uk with further details, so we can give you some answers.

Kind regards.

  • {{helpful}} {{helpful == 1 ? "person thinks" : "people think"}} this response is helpful

Update posted by Hollyanna (a service user)

Unbelievably, this has not been resolved after four months. I have heard nothing about the meeting last month that was supposed to be dealing with it.

Update posted by Hollyanna (a service user)

This is not yet resolved, even though it has been ongoing for 6 months. There has been some progress since in the latest letter I have received. This letter acknowledged that previous letters were "not as helpful as they might have been". It was accompanied by yet another report, but the tone of this one is rather different from the "scolding" tone of previous ones. It acknowledges that cancellation is different from rescheduling and that I did not reschedule at short notice, nor could I have known the policy about not rescheduling a second time. There is a new section in appointments letters that warns that "multiple cancellations" may result in being transferred back to the GP. It does not admit that "multiple" means two, so I still can't see how people are supposed to know that. It claims that referring people back to the GP is so s/he can "consider alternative options for treatment", but since I only needed an appointment to pick up insoles that had been custom-made for me, I fail to see what alternative options a GP could come up with. They would just have to get me another appointment to do that, which is what I was trying to arrange when all this started!! I stand by my opinion that this referring back is intended to be punitive. I feel it's meaning is "How dare you try to rearrange an appointment a second time!"

Update posted by Hollyanna (a service user)

Despite the slight mellowing reported above, the end of all the correspondence with the hospital is that everything remains the same except for a sentence in appointment letters saying that multiple cancellations will result in being discharged back to the GP (so they can refer you all over again!). It does not clarify that "cancellations" means rearrangements nor that "multiple" simply means two, although this has been acknowledged. It feels like all your other activities must be treated as insignificant in comparison to podiatry appointments.

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