Caveat: I just want to say I love the NHS and think it’s a great idea and my Dad was an NHS Doctor for 30+ years. Doesn’t mean the implementation/service is always good.

Choose and Book – Does it do what it says on the tin?

I have recently had the experience of trying to book a hospital appointment via the NHS Choose and Book system. This system is intended for people to organise and manage their own hospital appointment. I received details from my doctor as to my booking reference and my password and was given the website details.

So far so good… until I’ve tried to use the system.

Screenshots are at the end of this blog – it may make sense to look at these first…

Booking? There’s no booking

I used the website to organise my appointment at my local hospital. So far so good. I received a screen stating the date and time of my appointment which was 3 weeks away, and a button to “Book Appointment”, which I clicked.  I uploaded the details into my Google Calendar and thought that that was that.

But… that would be too easy wouldn’t it. I ring up on the day of the appointment to ask a couple of questions as to exactly where to go etc and if the snow that had fallen had meant that my appointment had been cancelled, only to be told that I didn’t have an appointment.

Not only was this very annoying, but it was also organised with my wife to drop me off and pick me up, I’d arranged no meetings that day, had arranged everything around not being around in the afternoon at all, and made sure that I had nothing outstanding in terms of deadlines.  I had organised around this appointment.

Five (yes five) phone calls later lasting around 45 minutes in total, and lots of frustration and yelling later, I find out that the online system never booked my appointment, even though I had clicked “Book Appointment”. The reason…?

Clicking on “Book Appointment” doesn’t actually confirm the booking of an appointment

Yes, you did read that correctly. Apparently, although it doesn’t say this anywhere on the website, the appointment needs to be confirmed in writing e.g. a letter needs to come through my door saying “this is your appointment”.  it does give you full details of your appointment as part of the process e.g. time and date and location and a button to confirm that you wish to “Book Appointment” (is this getting repetitive?) but this apparently is not the point.

As part of these phone calls to the bookings system and other organisations, I have found this out. The system can fail at the point of booking an appointment (which is after a user has clicked “Book Appointment”). When I tried to re-book my appointment, it stated online, after clicking “Book Appointment” again having been given a time and date and location again, that the system couldn’t book my appointment right now.

WHAT’S THE POINT?

This is ridiculous

Some points to note:

  1. The button should state “Confirm Provisional Booking” and also have a pop-up (or something that makes you notice at least) saying “This appointment is not booked until it has been confirmed in writing”.
  2. The details of the appointment, such as which hospital, building, time, date, should not be delivered to you until after confirmation from the hospital and not before as is the case now.
  3. The system appears to tell you that the hospital has booked you in and are you happy for that appointment date/time. This is not actually the case. It is actually asking you to confirm availability, and only after telling you all the details does it check with the hospital
  4. There was no prompt way I could even know that this had gone wrong! Without being given a prompt (note: waiting 1 or more minutes after clicking “confirm booking” is not prompt and is easily missed) message saying that the booking had not been made, how am I to know that it hasn’t been made? What feedback is there stating this?
  5. The two stage process of choose a time/date and then “Book Appointment” is pointless if the confirmation is going to be in writing anyway.  Make it clear that the appointment will be confirmed in writing or it’s not booked

There are more… but seriously it would be too long for a blog post and I have a life to live.

Upshot of all this?

I’ve had to wait 3+ weeks to find out that I don’t have an appointment when I thought I did and now have to wait a further 3 weeks to book in for another appointment… only to find that (at time of writing) the system is down and I can’t book using the internet or telephone.

Again, what is the point? I just want a simple outpatient appointment.

This system is supposed to speed things up and make it easier for people to organise appointments. I’d far rather the NHS had just said “turn up on this day on this date” and did it for me.

NHS IT procurement need their heads examining on this one

After tweeting about the frustration I’d had on this, I received a reply saying that the same thing had happened to someone else. If a single tweet can get this response, then I’m certain we’re not the only ones.

Oh… and anyone who thinks that this system is “ace” needs their head examining. It may work, when all systems are working fine, but there was very little to zero thinking about how the system would fail if the hospitals networks were unreachable, and whoever signed off on the copy for the site (seriously… “Book Appointment”?) needs to really evaluate their career choice.

Oh… and don’t get me started on public sector procurement. This was probably a £250,000 (minimum) website built by a “preferred supplier” who employed cowboy coders and made a significant profit.

Choose and Book: Value for money? Time saver? Not on your life… and that’s unfortunately what the NHS is there for!

Screenshots of User Experience

From the second time I tried to book… which also failed:

and this appeared after more than a minute of waiting…

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