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"Regressive change in appointments system"

About: Raigmore Hospital / Rheumatology

(as the patient),

I am being treated with Biologics, which require careful monitoring via a required full medical check, along with my consultant having to deal with the SMC/Nice registration/funding. This monitoring has to take place every 3 months, or used to, until the new appointments system caused chaos with this routine. My last three check-up appointments have been more than six weeks late, which could prove disastrous if something is going wrong. Also now have no idea when my appointment is likely to arrive, making life very difficult to organise, as these appointments cannot be missed.

Under the old system, my next appointment used to be made when leaving the clinic and locked in stone, leaving me feeling safer and knowing exactly when it was to take place. I feel that new system does not work for people in my situation and is a very regressive step by Raigmore.

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Responses

Response from Linda Kirkland, Interim Director of Operations, Raigmore Hospital, NHS Highland 9 years ago
Linda Kirkland
Interim Director of Operations, Raigmore Hospital,
NHS Highland
Submitted on 12/08/2014 at 14:25
Published on Care Opinion at 14:27


Dear RodR

I am sorry you nare having some difficulty in getting appointments. The system is for appointments under 6 weeks then you are given it there and then, for appontments longer than this, we send this to you. The reason for this is due to the number of clinics we found we were having to change. Doctors are required to give a minimum of 6 weeks notice of any leave they plan to take and so we found that a significant number of patients were being inconvenienced when clinics had to be changed. If you are happy to e mail me directly with your details on linda.kirkland@nhs.net I would be happy to look further into this for you and see if we can get your apppointments sorted for you

kind regards

Linda

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