NHS email addresses?

[Harry Bloomfield, Esq.]

on 20/01/2021, williamwright supposed :

My does and I make good use of it.

[Harry Bloomfield, Esq.]

Peter Johnson expressed precisely :

Judging from my patient record and when letters appear in my record, my surgery communicate with my hospital via snail mail and vv.

[Robin]

Email from patient to the NHS is easy for them: (a) the patient choses to use email, and accepts the risks and (b)the NHS has processes to control access at their end. I too have emailed hospitals routinely without difficulty.

Email from the NHS to patient is much more difficult because (a) they have to get and document agreement, after judging if the patient has capacity to understand the risks, and (b) they have no idea who else has access to the email.

Email is being used - and now the NHS has secure email I expect they will start using email much more. If you have a .gov.uk or similar email address they may even send secure email you. Failing that they can, like banks, send an email with a link for you to read securely in a browser.

[Andrew]

My GP practice will not accept emails from patients because 'they are too busy to read them'.

[Pancho]

"Perfect is the enemy of the good"

The NHS seems to prioritise not being blamed for mistakes over patient welfare. If a patient doesn't tell a GP about a problem, the GP is not to blame for not acting on it.

On the other hand, people who prioritise a good outcome generally ask for as much data as possible, if they can't process it effectively nothing is lost, but even simple automated processing can reveal interesting information which improves outcomes. It doesn't matter that the process is not perfect, that the process misses things, there is still a net benefit from the information gained.

In terms of IT and automation the NHS is still in the dark ages.

[Owain Lastname]

Print them out and hand them in to reception :-)

Owain

[Robin]

I find it hard to blame them when the NHS faces clinical negligence claims of £83 billion.

[Pancho]

lol! I was speaking against a blame culture, not meaning to continue it.

Yes, when the majority of participants in a system act in a particular way it is probably a problem with the system rather than the individuals.

The fact remains that we should try to change the system.

[Dave Plowman (News]

Was the email address one you'd reasonably expect to be able to reply to?

[Dave Plowman (News]

Does it really matter if someone else finds out about your appointment time?

[Dave Plowman (News]

Must mean they are too busy to read a letter too, then. Which takes more time than an email. And may be difficult to read if hand written.

[Robin]

and the results of your test for STDs?

[michael adams]

Medical practices would be a natural target for spam from johnny foreigner hoping to sell cut-price pharmacuticals, and emails from hypochondriacs and time wasters generally.

michael adams

...

[Bev]

A smug grin that says 'see, I'm *not* that old?

[Mark]

Ah the yellow line ;(

[Dave Plowman (News]

Does your GP do those? You must live in Soho.

[Dave Plowman (News]

And I'm sure they get lots of those by snail mail too?

[Andrew]

Not quite true. As far as NHS hospitals are concerned, the patient admin, clinic booking systems, digitized Xrays, path Lab results etc you will find systems as good as anywhere in the world. The weak link can be dealing with patients. Some Trusts do a better job than others.

[Andrew]

The problem is too many patients go for '2nd' opinions and include vast email attachments in support of their '2nd' opinion.

If they stuck to a single screen of text-based email it wouldn't be a problem.

[Andrew]

Including the attachments in support of their '2nd' opinion which could be hundreds of pages ?. This is why my GP practice won't accept emails from patients.