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Treatment Follow-up

Story from nhs.uk

"Treatment Follow-up"

About: William Harvey Hospital (Ashford)

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On completion of my treatment at the Channel day care centre I was informed that I would be contacted by the unit in order to return for a review with the surgeon. This review was to be in 8 weeks time. However I was never contacted and after 7weeks, I had to make contact with the hospital myself in order to make the appointment.

I have no problem taking responsibility for my own healthcare and could have done this much earlier. When I did telephone WHH, it took about 5 calls to reach the correct person/department. The numbers given to me did not seem to be correct. Needless to say, once I made the correct call, I had to then wait another 5 weeks for the appointment.

As ever with the NHS, I find clinical care good to excellent (although I have never been an in-patient in any hospital) but the administration always seems to let everyone down. It is slow and very outmoded despite the large numbers of admin staff, receptionists etc who always seem to be present. Why not make more use of e-mail etc instead of writing paper letters for every matter?

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Responses

Response from Julie Pearce, Chief Nurse + Director of Quality + Operations, East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust 11 years ago
We are preparing to make a change
Julie Pearce
Chief Nurse + Director of Quality + Operations,
East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust

I am responsible for quality improvement which includes patient safety and patient experience

Submitted on 16/02/2013 at 20:43
Published on Care Opinion on 17/02/2013 at 11:27

Thank you very much for taking the time to provide us with feedback. I am really sorry that the appointment system let you down.

We will be implementing a new process for the booking of follow-up appointments. It will enable patients to ring through to a central bookings service or to book their appointment on line.

It will take us about 6 months to roll this out to each speciality. We hope this will streamline the service and provide patients with more choice.

If you would like to be involved in helping us to design the service then please do get in touch with me on Julie.pearce1@nhs.uk

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Response from William Harvey Hospital (Ashford) 11 years ago
William Harvey Hospital (Ashford)

Submitted on 22/04/2013 at 10:55
Published on nhs.uk on 23/04/2013 at 05:15

Thank you for your feedback and we are sorry to hear of the problems that you have experienced. Your feedback, comments and suggestions will be fedback to the lead for the outpatient appointments, who is responsible for managing the service and it will also be logged onto our database which is fedback to each division monthly to ensure that they are aware of problems that patients and users of our service have experienced with a view to improving services. Feedback is always welcomed and we hope that your problems have now been resolved.

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