NLC - How hard can it be…?!?

[jason]

Letter from Edinburgh Royal Infirmary to call to arrange an outpatient appointment (with a 7 day deadline to call, backdated 5 days ). It goes like this:

1. THREE days calling the given number and no answer
2. Day 3: phone main switchboard - who put me through to dept
3. That number is an automated message
4. It tells me about washing my hands
5. 30 sec in it gives another number to call
   
   [counts blessings pen was to hand]
6. Call that number: "You've called the wrong number"
   
   [barely manage to avoid losing the plot]
7. Put through to 'The Appointments Secretary'
   
   [salvation?]
8. Answered by Mrs Grumpy of Grumpsville, and…
9. "This isn't the right number"
   
   [plot lost - rant delivered]
10. Put on silent (no reassuring music/beeps) hold for eternity
11. Mrs Grumpy grumpily arranges an appointment for the now also grumpy and stressed inconvenience (or 'patient')

You couldn't make it up….!!

[graeme]

Went to GP with back trouble.

GP says "You need physio. I can refer you, but due to paperwork it's actually quicker if you self-refer. Here's the form".

So I filled in the form and posted it off, and got an automated generic letter saying to contact the department for an appointment. No number to call on the letter. OK, I'll find it online.

Every webpage lists the phone number for the physio department as the national 0845 NHS switchboard number. No local numbers at all anywhere on the NHS websites. So, I call the switchboard, who put me through to an answer machine message that says, "To book appointments, don't use this number, call the 0845 number", so I do, and they keep putting me through to the same answer machine.

So, I call the 0845 number again, and instead of asking to be put through, I ask for the telephone number for the physio department. They offer to put me through. I decline, and eventually they give me a local number. I call it, but this time it rings immediately and there's no answer machine message (so obviously I was not being put through to that number before). They answered and were happy to book me an appointment.

Afterward my first appointment, while booking the second appointment they hand me an appointment card with the date/time on it, and "Call <same local number> to cancel or change your appointment" written clearly at the top. So, the number is hardly a secret as far as the (rather excellent) local physio team are concerned, yet the NHS websites don't have it anywhere, and do everything possible to hide direct numbers from you and put everything through the switchboard... They probably have no idea how impossible it is to speak to them unless you already somehow have the number.

Crazy.