\n<\/p>\n
The finding that one in seven GP referrals are getting lost, with harm to most of the patients involved (Thousands of patients in England at risk as GP referrals vanish into NHS \u2018black hole\u2019, 7 December), is no surprise to me. But it is not confined to GP referrals. Hospital patients are constantly in a similar position. I have experienced this myself many times, with investigations and\/or outpatient appointments promised but never happening. Sometimes this follows an appointment being cancelled, with a \u201cwe will be in contact soon\u201d message that turns out not to be true. Sometimes one just falls off the system, presumably included on a waiting list to be dealt with, that is then not dealt with. My experience is shared by large numbers of patients.<\/p>\n
The administrators are, in my experience, competent and dedicated people \u2013 but the system is not working. The commonly heard complaint that \u201cthere\u2019s too much bureaucracy in the NHS\u201d is wrong. What is needed is a well-managed administrative system, where the chief priority is that somebody is responsible for ensuring coordination, and that gaps are filled, eg when an administrator is on leave, ill, or moves to a different job. The present dire situation also means that nurses and doctors have to add administrative tasks to their already-heavy workload, adding to their stress and burnout.<\/p>\n
Probably it is not just the NHS, but a widespread problem. There are constant reports of failures of liaison between, for example, social services and the police. Good administration is undervalued, probably because everybody seems to be against \u201cbureaucrats\u201d \u2013 and politicians are often keen to be seen\u00a0to cut \u201cbureaucracy\u201d. Have an opinion on anything you\u2019ve read in the Guardian today? Please <\/em><\/strong>email<\/em><\/strong> us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our <\/em><\/strong>letters<\/em><\/strong> section.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The finding that one in seven GP referrals are getting lost, with harm to most of the patients involved (Thousands of patients in England at risk as GP referrals vanish into NHS \u2018black hole\u2019, 7 December), is no surprise to me. But it is not confined to GP referrals. Hospital patients are constantly in a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37427,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[2765,1229,1476,2188],"class_list":{"0":"post-37426","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-administrators","9":"tag-nhs","10":"tag-patients","11":"tag-vital"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Michael Joffe<\/strong>
London<\/em><\/p>\n