Monday, April 16, 2012
Call centres
From time to time I get phoned up by a friendly operator who wants to confirm that I was still intending to attend this or that hospital appointment, having already been warmed up by some rather stroppy words in the appointment letters explaining that I may be struck off the waiting list or worse if I fail to show without notice or otherwise adequate excuse. Presumably no-show is something of a problem and they have no choice but to be a bit stroppy.
Quite by chance yesterday it transpired that the same call centre serves the whole of England. Presumably some central foundation trust or other provides reminder services to any other trust that cares to sign up. Which, on the assumption that there are a number of different appointment systems in the NHS world, that IT people out there have been busily building feeds from every different appointment system to the central call centre, with updates either in real time or from time to time. I guess daily would do for these purposes. One assumes that the central system does not retain information about patients and does not get after-the-event information about no-shows - not even for management information and statistical purposes only. Otherwise, someone might be merrily building a know-all database about all the patients in the country...
All of which explains why if you ask the friendly operators anything about the appointments, like where in the building the Ashley Cole Suite is, they do not have a clue, having not, in the case of this example, been provided with maps of all the trusts on their books.
It would be interesting to know exactly why the Welsh have opted out. Is it a matter of national pride to have one's own appointment reminding call centre, a bit like African countries used to have their own airlines? Have the Welsh, being relatively small in numbers, been joined up for ages and see no need to fix what already works? Is there a Welsh language issue, with the English call centre not wanting to get embroiled in having to provide a bilingual service?
Also, who or what was the driver behind setting up the central service? In the new open NHS, is it open to entrepreneurial NHS civil servants in one trust to set up a stall selling a service to other trusts?
Quite by chance yesterday it transpired that the same call centre serves the whole of England. Presumably some central foundation trust or other provides reminder services to any other trust that cares to sign up. Which, on the assumption that there are a number of different appointment systems in the NHS world, that IT people out there have been busily building feeds from every different appointment system to the central call centre, with updates either in real time or from time to time. I guess daily would do for these purposes. One assumes that the central system does not retain information about patients and does not get after-the-event information about no-shows - not even for management information and statistical purposes only. Otherwise, someone might be merrily building a know-all database about all the patients in the country...
All of which explains why if you ask the friendly operators anything about the appointments, like where in the building the Ashley Cole Suite is, they do not have a clue, having not, in the case of this example, been provided with maps of all the trusts on their books.
It would be interesting to know exactly why the Welsh have opted out. Is it a matter of national pride to have one's own appointment reminding call centre, a bit like African countries used to have their own airlines? Have the Welsh, being relatively small in numbers, been joined up for ages and see no need to fix what already works? Is there a Welsh language issue, with the English call centre not wanting to get embroiled in having to provide a bilingual service?
Also, who or what was the driver behind setting up the central service? In the new open NHS, is it open to entrepreneurial NHS civil servants in one trust to set up a stall selling a service to other trusts?
# posted by Jim @ 4:50 AM 
