Appointment confirmation service to be introduced at Morecambe Bay hospitals

12:36pm Thursday 15th November 2012 in News

ANn appointment confirmation service is being introduced in hospitals run by University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust (UHMBT) in order to reduce the number of missed appointments.

Evidence from elsewhere in the country has shown that by providing reminders to patients of their appointments , the number of missed appointments are reduced. An additional benefit is that it allows patients to re-schedule appointments to a convenient time.

Reminders are made using either an automated telephone call or via a call centre.

George Nasmyth, Medical Director, UHMBT, said: “The new service is easy to use and costs the patient nothing. When patients receive a call they should follow the instructions of the automated call or agent, which will ask them to confirm who they are before reminding them of their appointment details.

"They will be asked to press the appropriate button on their telephone keypad to confirm, cancel or rearrange their appointment.

“The call and reminder is completely free of charge to the patient and improves the quality of the service provided to the patient. Missed appointments cost the NHS millions of pounds every year.

"The cost of the reminders is insignificant compared to the amount of money lost by missed appointments.”

If patients prefer not to be reminded about their appointments, they can opt out any time by informing the out-patient receptionist or contact centre on 0845 055 9990.

Comments(27)

Chris Custodiet says...
11:06am Sat 17 Nov 12

Its good to see improvements being made at UHMBT but why is the Chair of the governors an employee of the Trust? How can he possibly regarded as being independent of his employers?

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Chris Custodiet says...
11:19am Sat 17 Nov 12

The amount has not been made public but the Trust spent a small fortune on governance advice in its last financial year. Did the advisers not point out that appointment as Chair of governors ought to preclude the appointment of anyone with a material conflict of interest?
Sorry that I inadvertently missed out the word 'be' before the word 'regarded' in my earlier post.

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WilliamT says...
11:46am Sat 17 Nov 12

The whole point about governors is that they see nothing, hear nothing and most definitely say nothing- in that sense they performed according to specification up to and after the collapse of UHMB into special measures. The governors are there to accept what they're told by the Board, and be grateful for the tea and biscuits. Therefore, the governors are herded around by the Chairman of the Board, an 'interim' appointment that has lasted 9 months so far. He has been kept on to 'keep a lid' on things, and wander around saying that the problems are all over now. Except they're not.
I'm looking forward to hearing, a few months in arrears of course, what the governors are told (if anything) about the firm rap over the knuckles UHMB has received from the NHS Information Centre over the "misleading and confusing" mortality statistics it published in September and October. The NHS IC is responsible for the government approved mortality statistic SHMI which UHMB misreported and distorted. This criticism is welcome but belated- UHMB has been doing this since March 2010, and has 'got away with it' until now. My guess is that the Board will say it was all a mistake and the fault of the statistics company they employ, CHKS.

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Chris Custodiet says...
12:10pm Sat 17 Nov 12

UHMBT spent £1,550,000 on consultancy advice in its last financial year compared to £177,000 in the previous year. When asked about this at the AGM in September the Director of Finance said that the extra money was spent on governance advice from the Audit Commission and PriceWaterhouseCoope
r. That is an awful lot of money to spend when theTrust had been failing for years to address an abysmal appointmemts system and filing records.

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WilliamT says...
12:36pm Sat 17 Nov 12

Oddly enough, during all the fuss about the financial crisis at Bolton Hospitals and all the potential redundancies, they gave out a list of other NW trusts with major financial problems- 'at risk' they called them, and Blackpool was included. However, UHMB wasn't- this is despite all the money paid out to all these management consultants, the huge cost of all the reviews, reports into high mortality rates etc. and inspections, the emergency temporary buildings and the financial bonanza for the staff running all those extra out patient clinics. UHMB was said by Halsall and Kane to need to make some huge cuts even before the collapse was made public, so how can it not be 'at risk' we ask ourselves? The answer is that some slush money is being fed in by some dubious means. I have no specific knowledge, but suspect it is through one of the soon to be defunct commissioners like NHS North Lancashire or NHS Lancashire, where they can hide the payments when the organisations are shut down next March. Bolton is having to make all these drastic cuts after an £8m loan from the government- you'd think they would make a fuss at the soft money being diverted to North Lancs., but I suppose the residents there and in South Cumbria should be grateful.

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Chris Custodiet says...
9:59pm Sat 17 Nov 12

Why is it that experienced qualified nurses in care homes claim that they cannot get an out of hours doctor to visit patients in need of a doctor? Why are they told to call for an ambulance when the patient does not need an ambulance or hospitalisation? How much is being spent on the out of hours service in Morecambe Bay? Where is the money going?
It seems that in North Lancashire the money is being paid to Virgin. What is the position North of the Bay? Where is the transparency? Where is the accountability? Where is the service?

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Chris Custodiet says...
10:36am Sun 18 Nov 12

Can it really be the case that WG readers are more interested in the opening of new supermarkets than what is happening in the NHS? Let's have more comments. Let's have more information. Let's not rely on the self-serving Press Releases of those in charge. Let's find out what is really going on behind the scenes.

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WilliamT says...
12:19pm Sun 18 Nov 12

I'm afraid it's just us! To be fair, you can't expect people to be interested when they're not ill and it doesn't affect them Maybe people around Barrow don't read WG much, and that's where the cuts will bite first when they lose the consultant maternity service, and then other stuff goes. Kendal doesn't have those anyway.
Just for entertainment I will post the excuses UHMB provides for the mortality rate misreporting, as NHS Information Centre SHMI team has promised to 'update' (ugh!) me on the response, and they know I will harass them if they don't. That will be weeks though, so you would need to note address of the thread which will be long defunct by then.

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Chris Custodiet says...
1:01pm Sun 18 Nov 12

Is it surprising, given the high mortality rates, that a mentally alert resident of a care home would be wary about being packed off to hospital?
Regarding the governors, I found it interesting to see how few of them raised any points or questions at the September AGM. Indeed one of them would have given Obadiah Slope a run for his money in his fawning over the Interim Chair who incidentally attempted to pass off the undisclosed arrangements with Virgin as nothing to do with them.

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WilliamT says...
1:32pm Sun 18 Nov 12

AGM sounds like Prime Minister's Questions when the party in power plants questions like 'could the PM tell us his timetable for today?' or 'would the PM agree with me that the government is doing a very good job?'- that has at least been enlivened in this parliament by the coalition partners hating each other, while being desperate to stay in office.
As regards 'nothing to do with us, squire'- I think we will find that's what they say about the mortality rates.
To be fair, these are pretty good hospitals so no-one should worry unduly about going in- at the moment, they are still NHS hospitals after all. The problem is the UHMB management obsession with 'spinning' and 'covering-up'.

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Chris Custodiet says...
8:57pm Sun 18 Nov 12

Not just UHMB though is it William.

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pixie55 says...
10:48pm Sun 18 Nov 12

Appointment confirmation. They cannot even send out the appointments in the first place. The so-called HUBS are totally useless and in chaos. The appointments system is still in utter shambles. Yet they are appointing more and more people of £100,00 + salaries with the most rediculous titles while frontline staff are being cut on a daily basis. You are quite right about Barrow. The people don't even realise the services that are going and won't be told until it has already happened.

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Chris Custodiet says...
8:55am Mon 19 Nov 12

Welcome pixie55. The Royal Bolton Infirmary is set to lose around 500 front line staff whilst the grandes fromages who have presided over the mess it got into walk away.
On taking office the coalition ordered the publication of monthly expenditure in excess of £25,000 from public funds. UHMBs payments are on its website but they are out of date and not easy to find. When you do find them they disclose eye-watering monthly amounts paid to management consultants. These are in addition to the six-figure sums they are already paying to their senior managers. The £1.5million UHMB spent on management consultants in its last financial year looks like it was only the beginning.

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WilliamT says...
10:30am Mon 19 Nov 12

The 'walking away' point is well made. On 12th December 2011 Halsall made several untrue statements to Cumbria Health Scrutiny Committee, which is either unwilling or unable to detect or criticise this cavalier attitude to the truth. He later said he was unaware on that day that Chairman Kane was leaving, and therefore couldn't tell the Committee. Kane left suddenly on 14th December to spend more time with the Centre for Health and Justice at Nottingham University- apparently with no notice, he just walked out the door after 'resigning'. Usual employment conditions do not apply to 'them'!
The finger-on-the-pulse governors were just told that he'd gone and that Tomlinson had been immediately bumped up to Chairman.
The governors had hardly gulped down the 'value' custard creams on 4th January and 'ratified' Tomlinson's appointment when Monitor deleted him on 6th February to bring in Henshaw, who has now been 'interim' for nearly 10 months.
If you look up Tony Halsall on 'LinkedIn' you will see he's still listed as Chief Executive- combine this with UHMB's evasive statements on payoffs, and one suspects that Halsall is still being paid mucho casho to keep quiet- they kept on paying the replaced CE of North Cumbria NHST as CE for about a year after she'd been replaced by Goodwin, who was the man they brought in to supervise the takeover by Northumbria.
Despite the supposed crisis, UHMB is even now bringing in yet more layers of senior management: as well as keeping on the Board the same Director of Nursing who's been there since 2008, they have now appointed senior nurses for both FGH and RLI, who will probably have to have deputies for when they're always off at meetings in the management bunker at WGH.
Personnel Director Wilson was eventually sacked but simply set up Roger J Wilson Associates management consultants nearby, and one suspects that he is being slipped work by his pals, several of whom are still on UHMB payroll. Directors of Finance, and of 'Service Development' are still there, the Deputy Medical Director was simply made Medical Director after a pretence at an open appointment. Former Medical Director Dyer 'resigned' (and ceased immediately) March 28th, apparently to perform a 'review of education, training and research', which has still not been released (the problem being that as Medical Director he already bore considerable responsibility for education, training and research') despite the appointment of first one external Professor (Alberti who did the same job at Mid-Staffs) who then resigned and then another external Professor. Those that did leave, like Vaughan the Chief Operating Officer, received such praise that you know they were given Grade A references from the people left behind- even if they (Halsall in this case) were soon to be publically removed themselves. Vaughan is now at a management consultancy at Ironbridge, where he is said to have a 'track record of effective strategic and operational management'- tell that to the 18000 patients with the mislaid OPD appointments!
Senior NHS management is just like being a banker- you are protected almost without limit.

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Chris Custodiet says...
3:22pm Mon 19 Nov 12

Was it not the case, William T, that Tony Halsall's predecessor left a substantial deficit at UHMB before he was appointed to the significantly less demanding but higher paid job of CEO at the North Lancs PCT? In his last full year at the PCT he was paid beween £150,000 and155,000 but it seems that when the Lancaster Guardian asked about his pay they were told that it was £130,000.

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WilliamT says...
4:49pm Mon 19 Nov 12

We used to think **** had trashed UHMB, until we saw what Halsall did to it! After **** whent to NLTPCT, McGee was Acting CE until he went to NLTPCT as well. Then the pair of them left together to move to West Midlands NHS- **** was CE of the SHA and had a starring role at the Mid-Staffs. Inquiry explaining how the SHA managed to let it all go so badly wrong. Then he took a job as CE of North Bristol Hospitals but let them down at the last minute and went off to DoH instead. Another one with powerful friends looking after him at the DoH. I don't know anything about the finances, except that you can't believe anything UHMB and NLTPCT said about them- there are so many ways to hide dodgy payments in the accounts, especially when NHS Central and the DoH are turning legions of blind eyes.

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Chris Custodiet says...
10:24pm Mon 19 Nov 12

Did **** let North Bristol Hospitals down or did someone decide that it was not a good idea for him to go there when complaints were emerging about the failures of NLPCT under his leadership which eventually resulted in the unpublicised removal of NLPCT's Chair?

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WilliamT says...
2:00am Tue 20 Nov 12

At first I thought WG was defending him as well, until I realised the swear filter was only a little less dodgy than UHMB's mortality figures. Btllhmf (simple transposition cipher- substitute 1 letter later in alphabet) is the man concerned. He left NLTPCT long before Chairman Bingley suddenly disappeared with no explanation in the minutes, around June 2011 only about 6 months after he had been re-appointed for another 4 years. Bingley then died in an accident around August 11, so the story went with him.
I don't know anything about the reason Bingley or Btllhmf left (maybe you do?), but I doubt if any potential complaint about NLTPCT would have worried the authorities, as they are pretty confident they can keep it quiet. They're keen on secrecy, NLTPCT, especially about what they did and didn't say around the time of UHMB's Monitor authorisation.

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Chris Custodiet says...
9:15am Tue 20 Nov 12

I believe that William T is right about NLPCT. The Lancaster Guardian had acquired information on payments amounting to c.£475,000 between the Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust and the private company of NLPCT's Chair in March 2009. However it was not until December 2010 that it decided to publish it.
The LG report only dealt with payments up to December 2008 and excluded payments by UHMB to Bingley's company. These had started prior to Halsall's appointment and it may to be to Halsall's credit that, albeit not immediately, they were terminated under it.
The existence of both these arrangements contravened the terms of Mr Bingley's appointment and it was for that reason that, after breaking the rules for more than five years, he was eventually removed from office in May 2011.
Accounting rules had also required the related amounts to be disclosed in the audited accounts of the Morecambe Bay PCT whilst Mr Bingley was its Acting Chair and the audited accounts of NLPCT when he was its Chair. Complliance with these rules was the responsibility of the Accountable Officer (the CEO), the PCT's external auditors and the PCT's Audit Committee who approved the audited accounts on behalf of the PCT Board.
However no amounts were disclosed in the audited accounts of the Morecambe Bay PCT ended in March 2006 nor in the audited accounts of NLPCT ended in March 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. An amount was included in the 2011 audited accounts but by the time that these were published Mr Bingley had been removed from office. He died shortly afterwards in an accident whilst walking in Ravenstonedale.

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WilliamT says...
9:46am Tue 20 Nov 12

Because this is a useful reference topic, and they'll probably close it down soon, we need to get it right. It was in Uldale, above River Rawthey.

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Chris Custodiet says...
10:20am Tue 20 Nov 12

Thanks for that correction, William

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WilliamT says...
12:01pm Tue 20 Nov 12

Ah! Now I see Btllhmf's responsibility in all this- North Lancs. really is Corruption Central for the NHS with the perfect storm of UHMB coming together with NLTPCT, feeding Chief Executives over to keep it 'all in the family'. Little wonder that UHMB crashed into the mire at Mach 2, and the PCT was only saved by being abolished. They and the other authorities are now trying to massage history, and present it all as only a little local difficulty- a 'disconnect' to use Henshaw's cosy phrase- doesn't sound too bad, does it? We could still expose the guilty, though.
I reiterate that I'm only using the cipher to circumvent the swear filter not to avoid writing his name, but maybe you're right that DoH got wind of the scandal hanging over Btllhmf, and hustled him back to safety at Head Office. I see it was 18.11.11 when his appointment at North Bristol was announced, with a start date of 1.4.12, and his change of mind was announced on 23.2.12 with only 5 weeks to go. He was initially winched up into the DoH helicopter as W Midlands SHA sank beneath the waves, and they just 'extended his contract' to keep him out of North Bristol. They really do reward failure of NHS Chief Executives pretty well- his successor at NLTPCT, Soo-Chung, was similarly evacuated to PCT Cluster NHS Lancashire, which is responsible for over £1 billion of NHS money. At least she is showing some loyalty by diverting a lot of it back to UHMB, while showing Bolton the Big Stick.

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Chris Custodiet says...
2:00pm Tue 20 Nov 12

Pleased it is all falling into perspective William. The part of the story that relates to NLPCT is, however, but a small part of a much bigger and more worrying picture.
Bolton appears to be another hospital that has suffered from the failures of senior management and its unquestioning entourage. The result is that 500 front line staff are expected to pay for the mismanagement with the loss of their jobs whilst Boltonians fear they may lose their hospital entirely.
Now can you tell me anything you may know about the Out of Hours service that, unbeknown to the residents of North Lancashire, NLPCT granted to Assura/Virgin in March 2010.
I am beginning to hear the disturbing accounts of qualified and experienced nurses working in private care homes about their inability to get a doctor to attend residents in need of a doctor but in no need of hospitalisation.

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WilliamT says...
6:30pm Tue 20 Nov 12

Sorry, I don 't know anything about the GP On Call service- my specialist subject is the dodgy deals around the authorisation of UHMB from the failures of 2003 onwards to the catastrophic successful one of October 2010, along with the years of deceptions related to the UHMB mortality rates and stroke and maternity care. I can give you this, though, before they shut this topic down- the letter from the mortality index team at the NHS Information Centre.

From: Enquiries CRM
Sent: 15 November 2012 11:39
Subject: Ref: NIC-168769-P58Q0 Your Enquiry

Dear WilliamT,
Please see the following further response provided by our clinical indicators team:
We have contacted University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust on this matter and they have agreed to the following:
1) Change the KPI name and description in their Mortality Project and Monthly Quality Account Report for the next meeting (14th November)
2) Explain the reasons for that change to the members of the Clinical Governance and Quality Committee (a Trust Board Sub-Committee)

They have also agreed to confirm with us any future arrangements related to the their Mortality Project and Mortality Quality Account Reporting following the next board meeting, which is due to meet on 14th November 2012. We will continue to keep you updated with their responses when we next hear back from them.

We now understand that the information they have used on their reports were directly extracted from a tool provided by an information intermediary. To that effect, we will be following up this enquiry with that information intermediary as we believe other acute trusts subscribed to their services may also be using the same information which is misleading and confusing.

Thank you again for bringing this matter to our attention.

With kind regards,
Clinical Indicators Team
Health and Social Care Information Centre
1 Trevelyan Square
Boar Lane
Leeds
E-mail: enquiries@ic.nhs.uk
http://www.ic.nhs.uk


Square brackets are my comments. It may not look like much, but this is big news- these organisations would much rather not know such things- describing a Foundation Trust under supposedly squeaky clean new management as giving out 'misleading and confusing' mortality information is not popular with Monitor and DoH- it's as near as they can get to admitting 'UHMB is Grim Reaper HQ!'.
They're still trying to cover it up a bit though: demanding that an explanation has to be given to the UHMB Clinical Governance and Quality Committee, when they are the ones who are publishing the data! That's what Clinical Governance is! They know exactly what they're doing- the new Henshaw/ Daniel/ Nasmyth regime does not differ much from Kane/ Halsall/ Dyer- apart from the names, of course. It's like the last lines of 'Animal Farm'!

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WilliamT says...
6:41pm Tue 20 Nov 12

Sorry, it seems that the site removes anything inside square brackets. Here they are again
KPI- Key Performance Indicator
'information intermediary'- CHKS Ltd
'other acute trusts subscribed to their services may also be using the same information which is misleading and confusing'- they are. Blackpool for instance
'Thank you again for bringing this matter to our attention'- mind your own business you little berk

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Chris Custodiet says...
8:46am Wed 21 Nov 12

Would it be being unduly sceptical William T to think that the 'misleading and confusing' information might have been self-serving?
In due course, it might be possible to tell you a bit more about the granting of Foundation Trust status to Lancashire Care and how Monitor and the North West Strategic Health Authority brushed aside substantial complaints about false and misleading statements issued by Lancashire Care in relation to a proposed £150million PFI scheme and the serious concerns about the relationship between Lancashire Care, NLPCT and NLPCT's Chair. Nothing was addressed until the Lancaster Guardian report and the change in leadership at the SHA.

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pixie55 says...
8:37pm Thu 22 Nov 12

Has anybody seen in the Evening Mail that the Mr. Fairclough responsible for the useless Lorenzo computer system that has caused all the out-patient appointments not to be made, lost and wiped off the system has been rewarded for his failure. Only yesterday I know of a friend who phoned the abysmal appointment centre at Kendal to check on his appointment as he was passed being seen only to be told there was nothing on the system for him. He phone the secretaries at FurnessGeneral to be told yes he was on the system and they would try and contact Kendal for him to get his appointment. What a shambles this appointment centre is. Appointments should be returned to the reception desk at Furness General.

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