As part of its work to improve patients’ experience when accessing services, Manx Care is piloting a process where patients are informed of their appointment six weeks before the appointment date. This will greatly reduce the number of letters that patients receive, and is predicted to reduce confusion and therefore reduce the number of patients that do not attend appointments.
Manx Care will initially trial this for all Orthopaedic first Consultant outpatient appointments, running the pilot for six weeks, from 4 December 2023, to measure its success. It is expected that other services will follow the same process early in 2024.
Appointments will continue to be booked in the usual way, with the only change to the process being in the timing of when the appointment letter is sent.
Please note that all those who have appointments booked less than six weeks in advance will have their letter sent to them at time of appointment booking.
It is hoped that this will help more patients to remember the date of their appointment, rather than having to take note of it months in advance. Please be reassured that if you receive a letter and cannot attend the appointment in six weeks’ time, you can rearrange it by telephoning the Patient Information Centre in the same way you would have done before. Details will be given in your appointment letter.
Another reason for the change is the expected improvements in terms of efficiency and paper/postage costs – when an appointment is booked and the patient is notified far in advance, it sometimes has to be changed due to clinic changes. However, these changes are discouraged less than six weeks ahead of the appointment, unless this is due to sickness or otherwise unexpected necessary leave. This gives us more confidence that once we have sent your letter, your appointment should not be cancelled, meaning this should be the only letter we have to send.
Because of this, we would ask that patients do not telephone the Patient Information Centre before they receive their letter to find out when their appointment is due. This is because, as explained above, all appointments are subject to change prior to the six-week window.
Overall, it is hoped that this improves the patient experience, as well as efficiencies on the part of Manx Care.
If you have any queries about this change, the Manx Care Advice and Liaison Service (MCALS) can be contacted on mcals@gov.im or + 44 1624 642642.
