General Chat

We don't even get a letter for the appointment, we get a phone call with a real person at the other end giving us the information.

All our reminder phone calls so far have also been a real person, although it is sometimes hard to find a contact if the message is left on the message machine, as the use of cell phones has greatly increased.

The hospital I've been going to recently is at the University, although it is joined at the hip to one of the 2 major hospitals in town. If I phone the general number for the university hospital, I get directed and connected with the right department, and any questions answered immediately.

On Monday, there were 3 people at the Information Desk inside the front door. One was responsible for directing you to the hand sanitising station plus handing you a safely sanitised mask if you weren't wearing one. One person was responsible for answering questions as to where to go (and how to get there), and the 3rd was a "floater" filling in as needed.

The only thing that was missing was long-time parking (longer than 2 hours) at the hospital. The 2 recommended parkades were at least a 10 minute walk away. We were lucky on both days to get a spot in the 2 hour lot at the hospital, even if we did have to do 2 loops of it before getting a spot.

Our local hospital has a different no. for each department and they are quite happy to tell you what it is, so getting through is no problem. I rarely have to wait at all. Ringing the Glasgow hospitals is a nightmare - the one that is officially our A and E only takes calls between 9 - 12am. Then I discovered, by chance, that our local hospital switchboard would put you through to the right department, if asked! Problem solved. :-) :-)

We get a letter for appointments, followed by an automated phone call a few days in advance, to confirm or cancel. It has worked well, so far. Last time I had an appointment at short notice they said they would send a letter anyway, so that there was written proof!! On that occasion they didn't bother with the telephone reminder.

I read somewhere in the last couple of days of someone who had rung the cancellation number in thier hospital letter.
They are now down as a 'did not show' as it was the wrong number :-S

The letters which we receive are actually making the appointment, not a reminder.

Nearer the time, our hospital group send an automated telephone reminder stating time and date and which hospital. The latter is not referred to by name, but by it's initials, which Auto makes into a word and not easy to make out if you are hard of hearing like me.

I had a telephone hospital appointment booked for Tuesday of this week, but having spoken to the team last week, it was agreed that I didn't now need Tuesday's appointment, so the lady said she would cancel that. Later in the week came the automated telephone reminder, so following instructions then, I pressed 2 and automation said that the appointment would be cancelled.
However......
On Sunday a second automated call reminded me of Tuesday's phone appointment.
On Monday, I tried to call the department as I didn't want them to record me as a 'no show' and perhaps stop someone else having chance to have that call time.
I was 10th in the queue.
My phone rang out of battery charge before my call was answered. My daughter eventually got through on her phone and explained the situation. The department told her that many many people were phoning in the same situation.
What a waste of everyone's time.........

We don't get letters OR emails from our hospital reminding us of an appointment.

We only get a phone call telling us the appointment has been made for such-and-such time on such-and-such a date. We can change the appointment at that time, or phone later to change it (if we can find the correct phone number!).

I've just finished a test, got a phone call at 9 am on Friday morning reminding me that I was down for an appointment yesterday afternoon, left on the message machine, person with difficult accent.

Good job I refer to the calendar every day, and that I religiously write all appointments on there!

OH scratches his appointments on spare bits of paper, tells me what he remembers, and then we get a bit of chaos as I/we try to sort it out.

I wonder if it's the *wonderful* NHS IT system that has had outages, followed by failures since ooh, 2010?

Hmm. Good job you knew which day it was.

That has happened to me before, ie. receiving a letter the day after I have attended for an appointment.
I haven't received a map for quite some time. I used to wonder just how much they spent on maps sent to people who had to attend frequent follow-up clinics at the same hospital.

I received a letter yesterday for an appointment at hospital on a date in June at 12.20.
Written beside the time there was written in brackets (please ignore any messages with an alternative time)..... :-S :-S

OH got a letter this morning about his hospital appointment together with a how to get there map. That would have been useful yesterday as we had never been to that site before.

Luckily we knew it was yesterday as we had originally been sent two letters telling us of the appointment. Good thing we made a note of the date and time.