Monday, 2 April 2007

The ludicrous nature of choose and book

I had a good one in clinic today.

A patient was being seen by a different speciality at a hospital 20 miles down the road and they diagnose a hernia. Firstly, they have to refer him back to his GP to get an out-patient appointment with a general surgeon. When the gentleman gets to his GP the choose and book system doesn't list his local hospital! So believe it or not he can't "choose" his local hospital 6 miles from his home and he ends up with us.

This is clearly nonsense for the patient, but I also wonder what the carbon footprint of this is?

1 comment:

Henry Potts said...

We've done some recent research surveying patients who have been through Choose and Book and it suggests that Choose and Book is failing to deliver meaningful choice to patients: see here