BHRUT: Reducing waiting times for elective services

Dear Colleagues,

As part of our ongoing work to validate our waiting list and support our efforts to reduce waiting times for elective services, we have identified over 4000 patients across BHR who have missed an appointment with us and have no further “next event” booked on our system. In line with our Access policy, we would like to discharge these patients.

To ensure that it is appropriate, and safe to do so, we have undertaken a three-stage validation process, to understand if each patient needs to be rebooked or can be safely discharged in line with our Access policy. As part of this exercise, we have attempted to contact all patients who we believe should be discharged. While we were able to contact most of this group of patients, we have been unable to contact 1455 individuals. We have attempted to contact these patients twice, varying the times we have contacted the patient, to maximise our chance of reaching them. We have also checked contact details and used alternatives, where available.

In line with our Access policy, we are now planning on discharging these patients back to their GP. Discharge letters will be sent out to all patients, in this group, with a copy shared with each GP. We do not anticipate that these patients will require further treatment or referral, but if this is the case please make a new referral to us for that patient.

If you do have any queries, please contact the following:

Julia Doe, Head of Patient Administration on Julia.doe2@nhs.net
Janet Bartlett, GP Liaison Manager on janet.bartlett@nhs.net

Download copy of letter.