Is this really how we're handling long medical waiting lists? Send a fucking text out and wait for all the older people to either drop off the waiting list because they didn't reply or just die?
Do better NI this is fucking despicable
by PorkSword47
Is this really how we're handling long medical waiting lists? Send a fucking text out and wait for all the older people to either drop off the waiting list because they didn't reply or just die?
Do better NI this is fucking despicable
by PorkSword47
13 comments
I waited nearly 18 months for this letter (from Belfast trust) then forgot to reply in the time, and that was me off the list
There be no money for services .. this is the reality
Or they send it to a previous address even though you have changed your address with every other NHS service you have to call the individual departments
I dont know what way patient records work but one quick look at my recent gp visits would of confirned i still urgently need the appointment I’ve waited 5yrs for.
Getting that text was like getting punched in the effected area
I got this a few times with my vasectomy. It’s an easy way to cut down the waiting list if you just make people eventually go private.
They told me also it was 10 years for a tonsillectomy
Wife got a letter asking if she wanted to stay on the waiting list, said she could call or email in response. She emailed and they don’t even respond to say it’s been received.
I have it drummed into my parents’ heads (late 60s/70s) not to reply or click on links from spammy looking texts. I have them so well trained now they’d probably just ignore it one like that. Doesn’t surprise me though, my mum once travelled an hour and a half for a consultant appointment only to be told on arrival it had been cancelled and oh, did she not get the letter? Communication is shocking in the trusts
It’s the same in England. Had three of these texts over a year before I could see an ENT who wanted urgent scans doing.
I forgot my mum was still the main point of contact on my medical records and she texted yes to 8284 rather than ‘yes 8284’ and that was me off the list, had to ring and beg them to put me back on it and basically restarted my 6 year wait, only got seen briefly because I thought I had a ruptured cyst and ended up in A&E and even then it was just to check to see if there was anything wrong with me rather than a proper appointment and once they determined I was ‘fine’ they sent me packing to A&E.
Waiting lists are ridiculous and I can understand that they’re trying everything to reduce the list so people who need seen get seen, but there are other ways and while our government argue over pointless orange and green arguments it’s normal people who are suffering.
Raise it with your local MP and MLA.
**laughs in the other room**
The way their texts look, and the number it comes from, is so informal that I’m sure a lot of people don’t reply thinking it’s a scam.
I got a call from a mobile number, when I answered it was a woman with a Scottish accent saying she was from the trust, asking about the waiting list and if I “still wanted to be seen”. Who answers unknown/mobile numbers these days?! Probably would’ve been taken off the list had I not answered too.
There’s surely better ways to handle it.
It’s the same down in the south.
Yes, I’ve had a few of these. I assume if you don’t reply, they’ll assume you are dead and will remove you from the lost.
This really isn’t that bad.
Lists are full of people who shouldn’t be on them, would bail on their appointment and ignore letters anyway or no longer need them.
This is just the price of decades of taking the money and time for granted. It sucks that it affects some people negatively but everything affects some people negatively and it is still rectifiable anyhow for most cases.
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