Choose and re-refer

Today I received a letter in the surgery post from our local hospital, telling me that we'd asked for a choose and book referral for Mrs. Jones (I know), but that unfortunately at the time there were no appointments available and so her details had been forwarded to the "Central Booking Service" at the hospital. It went on to explain that:

"When we receive a patient's details in this manner, we are unable to access their referral on the Choose and Book software, this is a national issue, rather than a [local hospital] one. We subsequently requested, on three occasions, for your practice to fax us a copy of your patient's referral letter but we had no success."

They had therefore discharged the patient, because without the referral (which we sent through Choose and Book and they couldn't access) they couldn't make an appointment.

I checked the system. We had never had a request from them for the original referral letter. So we had sent them a referral they knew they had but couldn't see, and they had made three requests of us which we didn't have and couldn't see.

I called the hospital. Much confusion: she had an outpatient appointment booked, despite the letter saying exactly the opposite. The reason I couldn't find their requests for faxes is that "normally we telephone with them".

I know our reception very well indeed, and they invariably answer phones quickly and pass on messages efficiently. With this sort of thing they wouldn't even do that - the referral would just have been reprinted and refaxed.

All a bit suspicious - although at least my patient has an appointment. Despite the system.