| New appointment confirmation service introduced |
| Written by Head of Communications |
To help remind patients of their routine hospital appointment, and to reduce the number of missed appointments, Ashford and St Peter’s is introducing a new appointment confirmation service from Monday 15th August.
Access Manager at the Trust, Hannah Donoghue, explains more: “Every year, thousands of appointments are wasted in hospital when patients fail to attend. Often it’s just because they forget to come, or something else comes along and they forget to make the cancellation. We want to be able to offer a flexible service that makes things easier for both our patients and our staff and we hope that by providing this new reminder service, we can help patients who have forgotten as well as make it easier for those who want to cancel or rearrange their appointment.”
The reminders will be made using a combination of automated telephone calls and calls from call centre staff. When a patient receives the call, they will be asked to follow the recorded instructions, asking them to confirm who they are before giving the appointment details. The patient can then press the appropriate button on their telephone to confirm, cancel or rearrange the appointment. They won’t be charged for the call.
Hannah continues: “The Department of Health estimates that the average cost of a wasted appointment is around £100. This means that missed appointments are costing the NHS millions of pounds every year. Last year, 44,000 appointments at Ashford and St Peter's hospitals were wasted between April 2010 and March 2011. The cost of this reminder service is very small compared to the amount of money missed appointments cost us and we expect the new service to save at least £1m between now and the end of March next year, at the same time as giving a much better service to our patients.”
The service will start on 15th August for most outpatient appointments; appointments for Trauma and Orthopaedics will start during September and will be extended to our children and young people’s department at a later date.
Patients will receive the reminder call at least 7 days before their appointment and if there is no answer the first time, the service will ring them back at least twice at various times of the day and early evening in order to make contact.
Hannah finishes: “We hope patients will welcome this service; however, if they prefer not to receive the reminder, they can contact our Appointments Centre to let them know and we will remove them from the service. To advertise the new service to patients, we are running a comprehensive awareness campaign with information leaflets being sent out with all our new appointment letters.”
The numbers to call for patients who don’t wish to participate in the service are:
For appointments at St Peter’s: 01932 72 3831
For appointments at Ashford: 01784 88 4351
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| Last Updated ( Thursday, 04 August 2011 14:48 ) |
