A new booking process which aims to ensure that patients receive appointments in order of waiting time, medical priority and avoid rescheduling has been rolled out further across the Trust.
The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (ROH) has been running the process, known as partial booking, for new appointments since 2019 but has this week gone live for all review appointments, with the exception of Oncology, Spinal Oncology, POAC and Metal on Metal.
The partial booking process gives the patient an estimated appointment date (as requested by their clinician) while simultaneously placing the patient on a waiting list. The patient is then sent a letter with a confirmed appointment date giving them 6 weeks’ notice. This ensures that patients receive appointments in order of waiting time, medical priority and will avoid the patients’ appointment being rescheduled.
This project, which is ran by the Operational Project Team in association with the Outpatient Modernisation Project, is helping improve processes and efficiency.
The Operational Management Team includes Clinical Service Manager Matt Payne, Project Manager Sheeba Mir and the Appointments Team.
Benefits of partial booking:
- Clinics will only be booked 6-weeks ahead and will therefore reduce the amount of clinics being rescheduled. This will also be less confusing for patients
- Patients will be seen within a clinically acceptable timescale, improving patient safety and clinical outcomes
- If patients do need to be rescheduled due to short notice/emergency leave, they will only be moved a maximum of 5-weeks into the future
- Capacity issues that exist will be visible, allowing the operational management teams to work with clinicians responding to short and long term shortages in capacity
- As patients will be receiving an appointment with 6-weeks’ notice, they will better know if the date and time is convenient for them. This, along with the DrDoctor interactive text messaging system, will mean patients will be able to manage their appointments more easily and effectively further reducing DNA rates
- As there will be waiting lists of un-booked patients for each consultant, short notice cancellations by patients can be more easily filled.
If you have any questions about the Partial Booking process, please contact a member of the Project Team or Appointments. Any queries from patients should be directed to Appointments on 0121 685 4186 between 8:00 and 18:00, Monday to Friday.
