Patient wishing to expedite their appointments

We have had a lot of feedback from practices that hospital administrative staff are directing patients back to their GP practice to write letters to expedite their treatment.

Devon Referral Support Service (DRSS) have been working with the provider booking teams to ensure:

• that when a patient contacts a hospital asking to expedite their first outpatient appointment following referral, the booking clerk will only advise patients to contact their GP if the patient has noted a significant deterioration in their condition prior to first outpatient appointment. If you do have a patient who you feel needs a more urgent appointment, please contact the hospital directly to discuss the case on an individual basis with the clinician, this can be done through current advice processes or via letter to the hospital
• if a patient contacts a hospital asking to expedite a procedure/diagnostics and feel that their condition has significantly deteriorated, these patient should be managed by the hospital clinicians and booking teams

If you continue to get patients contacting you to expedite appointments inappropriately, please contact DRSS Helpdesk and we will escalate to the hospital teams.

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