A dedicated phone line has been set up for patients who believe their outpatient follow-up appointment may have been delayed. The phone line number is 0845 608 0278 and this operates 24-hours a day, seven days a week.
UPDATE AS OF 4 APRIL 2012
Most of the patients affected by delays in follow-up outpatient appointments have now been seen as a result of a concerted effort by staff across the organisation.
Around 19,000 patients were affected by the delays. All of the urgent and priority patients were seen by the end of last year and most of the remaining patients that needed an appointment have now been seen.
There are about 300 patients who still need to be seen, including some cases where the Trust is arranging additional capacity, people that had other commitments on the dates they were offered appointments and some people it has not been possible to contact yet.
Dealing with the backlog has involved putting on about 1,100 additional clinics.
It is unacceptable that these delays ever occurred and I’m pleased that we are now very close to having seen all the patients who were affected. This has been a very big programme of work and it wouldn’t have been possible without the hard work of the doctors, nurses and other staff who were involved in dealing with this problem.
The key thing now is that we ensure this cannot happen again. We are currently introducing a new booking system which we believe offers a permanent solution to preventing the situation from recurring.
This project is now being overseen by the new Programme Management Office that has been set up. It is part of the wider work that is going on within the Trust to deal with the current issues and make sure that longer term improvements are made.
Some improvements are being made quickly but others will inevitably take longer. Our vision is to return our hospitals to providing a consistently high level of safe patient care, which in time, is up there with the best. We want all our staff to feel proud to work in our hospitals and we want to restore public confidence in all our services.
The new system of outpatient booking ‘Hubs’ is already running successfully in a number of specialities, including gynaecology, gastroenterology, urology, endocrine and diabetes and dietetic outpatient services.
A clinical lead is involved in each Hub, giving clinicians more involvement in the management of outpatient services. The aim is to have the new system operating for all specialities by the end of April.
These projects are now being overseen by the new Programme Management Office (PMO). The PMO plays a key role in helping the Trust to improve the efficiency and strength of the organisation for the benefit of patients and in ensuring that improvements are implemented quickly and effectively.
ERIC MORTON
INTERIM CHIEF EXECUTIVE
Outpatient follow-up appointment leaflet
