Bag's Rants

Automation in the NHS.

I've got back after a visit to the doctors with my granddaughter earlier today. It seems she is poorly. Wow! Could that be why we took her for a visit? Never mind.

At the practice, why do they call it practice anyway it's a bit worrying, they informed us that she has missed out on some injections. What! How did that happen? She has been there for weighing an measuring every two weeks without fail. The health visitor sees her on those visits and nobody noticed that she was missing some vital shots. It seems that the injections are automatically sent out by the reception. Well ours were not and by the sound of it they were not the only ones. In the meantime we have to give her some medicine and bring her back on Tuesday.

So I tried to book an appointment for Tuesday. Can't do that, you need to call on Tuesday to book it. What is the point of this £1B, just for the NW, NPfIT computerised system that is being installed if you can't book an appointment a few days in advance?

I am involved in the NPfIT programme and know for a fact that neither of these are computer problems. The missing injections are probably because they don't use the automatic printing of appointments as it screws up theirarchaicc method of manually allocating resources and the other one is to meet the Government targets of seeing everyone inside two days. If I book more that two days in advance I am a failed statistic. The best way to not fail is to stop people booking anything over a day. Voila, an artificial target met. They also do that with surgery appointments. Read more here.

All this extra money doesn't seem to make the system better. Maybe we need some moreconsultantss to go in and see where all the money is going. Give them a mirror as an aid.

posted by Bag @ 6:43 pm