OT: North Mid Hosp, PCN?

[Steve Walker]

I am waiting to see if I got caught by a trap the other day. I drove to the local supermarket with my eldest son (14) and started shopping. After 10 minutes, I realised that I'd lost track of the time and that I should have been elsewhere to pick up my youngest son (9) from the school disco. I just had time and raced off, leaving my eldest to continue the shopping. Now obviously, he had no way of paying and couldn't transport bags of shopping for a family of five, even if he had, so I had to go back for him. I now have to wait to see if they try to charge me for breaking the "no return within one hour" rule, despite me only being there for a total of 25 minutes, with a 15 minute gap in the middle (3 hours allowed free).

Separate to this, one thing that has crossed my mind in the past is that I don't know whether the ANPR camera can give a good picture of who is driving. It is not beyond probability that my wife returns from shopping, realises that she has forgotten something and that I go back for it. If the car returns within the hour, but the driver doesn't, that cannot break the one hour rule, as the "contract" is supposed to be with the driver, but the ANPR system works on the car.

SteveW

[Steve Walker]

Fortunately our local hospital has stopped charging. My wife was called in at 07:05 for a op on her wrist (the early hour caused us much disruption, as she needed me to take and pick her up and our children were at that stage too young to be left alone). Anyway, she was given a pre-med at about 10:00 and then left to wait and finally called for theatre at 17:30 (after it had worn off totally).

Previously we had attended the eye hospital numerous times and despite appointment times, ranging from 09:15 to 10:45, she was never seen before 14:00 (on one occasion 15:45) despite the clinic officially finishing and closing at 13:00.

On one trip taking my sister to the hospital for a minor procedure, we were the first to arrive, only to later find that 30 people had been given the same appointment time; each set of notes was placed in the basket as you checked in and then they worked through them from top to bottom, so we were last!

I have never understood why they find it so difficult to grasp the idea of staggering appointments properly through the day and sticking (fairly close) to them. Some of us are paid by the hour and time wasted waiting is lost income.

SteveW

[T i m]

One local hospital does just that, another does similar (where you can even make your final 'top up' payment by text or online up till midnight that same day).

When we hired a van at Stanstead Airport, you stop at the barrier, press a button and out pops a ticket with the date, time and your registration number printed on it (and this was a few years ago now).

Cheers, T i m

[T i m]

Ignoring the money saved, it takes away the risk of getting a PCN (presumably)?

And the only way you could get round that (AFAICS) at my hospital in question is pay £15 up front (that gives you up to 24 hours). [1]

Oh. I'd have to say, most of our outpatient appointments seem to take quite a while to get in many cases, once there, we generally get seen on time and unlike yesteryear, aren't typically sitting in a packed waiting room. That both means you can generally sit down and there are fewer people in the car park.

No! That really aught to be on a ticket system, like our local clinic does for blood tests.

That would be better. I can understand why they might need to keep a buffer of people to ensure they keep any consultant staff 100% occupied but there are limits.

Yup. Or they could ask you to be on standby and ring you when the buffer had dropped to an hour or summat? I'm sure most people would rather stay at home than in a room full of sick people. If you give them your average travel time it could even be automated so the system rings you at the appropriate time for you to get there for a particular time block (or hospital reminders are automated and Boots have just texted me to say my prescription is ready. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[1] Aga 'Up to 1 hour, £2 Up to 2 hours, £3 .... Up to 8 hours, £8 8-24 hours, £15."

Isn't the last one just 'Up to 24 hours' ... or could / will they issue you with a PCN if you leave sooner than 8 hours ... ?