The Prime Minister has said that he hopes the millionth patient to use the Choose and Book system will make his or her appointment in September.
The brief mention of the NHS e-booking scheme came as part of the Prime Minister’s monthly press briefing in Downing Street. It was a piece of good news offered to assembled journalists who were pre-occupied with the Cabinet’s split over the Middle East and queries about the Deputy Prime Minister’s fitness to run the country during the PM’s summer holiday.
Blair said: “We hope then also to reach the one millionth person who will use the new Choose and Book system inside the National Health Service and we will carry forward that reform programme along with the proposals on pensions and energy.”
He added: “I can draw those domestic strands together. Essentially there are two elements to what we are trying to do domestically.
“The first is to modernise this country in the face of a rapidly changing world. It is the reason for pensions and energy policy changing, for the reforms in the health service and schools and in our criminal justice system.
“But secondly to do that on the basis of principles of fairness and social justice, in other words opening up opportunity to all.”
E-Health Insider Primary Care reported last month that more than 20% of eligible referrals were being made using Choose and Book. Use of the system has increased markedly over the past two months rising from an average of around 6,000 bookings a day in May to a peak of 10,638 on 10 July.
The increase in use of the system is thought to have been prompted by practices working to meet the criteria choice and booking directed enhanced service (DES).
The NHS is using a mixture of methods to achieve the choice when appointments are made with some bookings made end-to-end in the GP surgery via the web, some made by phone and GPs in Somerset using what they term the “medical secretary model.”
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