I hate it when NHS services don’t work for staff or patients. It provides fuel for critics, it wastes staff’s time and demoralises them. Here’s a great example.
NHS England’s Primary Care Bulletin (Issue 167, 23/12/21) trumpeted the start of “NHS Service Finder”.
The bulletin says “If you’re looking to direct or sign post a patient to another NHS service, NHS Service Finder provides fast, accurate online information about local health and social care services. It enables healthcare professionals to signpost patients to the most appropriate care, removing the need to use outdated directories.
You can search by location, service, or keyword, and receive instant results. There are even interactive maps to show you where services are located and directions which can be shared directly with patients. Sign up for this free service using your NHSmail address or for more information contact the service finder team.
I’m keen on this kind of thing because I think if patients can see that all local services are snowed under, they are more forgiving of a long wait at the main local hospital. If there are apparent faster appointments elsewhere then generally that’s good for patients, though, if its cherry picking of services by private providers, it probably isn’t a good thing for the NHS and everyone as a whole but that’s another topic.
I quickly signed up and looked up services for patients in my locality.
Having had my work email address verified and logged in I gaily typed ‘York’ and selected the first option here:
Rooky error. Despite being an option it’s clearly not a known location. Funny that given some 8 million people visit the city in a normal year.
Hoping for more success I selected the hospital address itself and made some progress in that I got some results. However, in themselves, I’m not sure my patients will be grateful for the information. The closest was in East Lincolnshire and was a service for East Midland Ambulance Staff only so I can’t refer patients there.
The next one was the Community Dermatology Service at Barbara Castle Way Health Centre in Blackburn, a mere 58.4 miles away. Some of my patients don’t like travelling 10 miles, let alone 58.4! The only other two services offered were a bit further to travel, in Manchester.
There are a lot of NHS hospitals around me – York, Harrogate, Goole, Scarborough, Leeds, South Tees, Hull, Pontefract, Wakefield and Leeds and pre-pandemic there were some community services, though they varied in whether they’d take patients from ‘out of their area’. In summer 2020 local NHS hospitals sent messages to some practices they weren’t going to accept referrals from outside of their primary CCG areas, though these were rarely explicit and clear to all, and led to a lot of aggro for practices and patients.
Now at least I know there’s very little routine service for patients for dermatology (or anything else) other than so called two week wait referrals at present. The NHS Service Finder demonstrates that clearly. The fact that it doesn’t tell us how bad things are at our local providers renders it as useless as GPs’ only current way of knowing how long patients will wait for a routine outpatient appointment…guessing ‘for ever’.
Fortunately, we know, its not that bad, though it isn’t good. What’s worse is wasting our time with a service that clearly isn’t ready. Every minute lost by a clinician exacerbates the inefficiency of the NHS and justifies the criticism thrown at it.
ShaunOConnell.com 