Choose and Book passes 50,000 mark
More than 6,000 appointments a week are now being made through Choose and Book with the total number of bookings now over 52,000, Jane Cummings, the national director for C&B, has revealed. Speaking at a conference organised by the Health Service Journal, Ms Cummings said this was a marked improvement on July when just 100 […]
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NHS Direct proposes online social care wiki
NHS Direct could soon be setting up an online social care ‘wiki’ that would allow patients to learn from one another about coping with illness and where to obtain support and services. The idea, part of a submission made to the Department of Health’s consultation into its out of hospital care White Paper and announced […]
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Granger says NPfIT in danger of being derailed
The director in charge of the £6.2 billion NHS National Programme for IT has warned that the project is in “grave danger” of being “derailed”, according to leaked Whitehall e-mails. The claim was made by NHS IT director General Richard Granger, in an email to Margaret Edwards, director of access and patient choice, at the […]
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Choose and Book ‘will be a year late’
The flagship Choose and Book electronic booking application will be at least a year late by the time it is rolled out across England NHS chief executive, Sir Nigel Crisp, said yesterday. Speaking to the House of Commons public accounts committee (PAC) he said that patients would still be offered a choice of four or […]
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Choose and Book referrals top 20,000
GP referrals made under Choose and Book have topped the 20,000 mark on a curve that is “rising but delayed”, a conference heard. Richard Gibbs, a Connecting for Health (CfH) executive lead for Choose and Book, said bookings were now being made at the rate of over 700 per day but he added: “If all […]
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Correcting for health
EHI Primary Care looks at Connecting for Health’s work in updating health IT in prisons, and progress in a similar scheme in Ireland.
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CfH approaches 2,000th deployment
Connecting for Health’s (CfH) latest deployment figures indicate that almost 2,000 systems had been deployed by the programme as of the beginning of September. The figure represents an increase of over 800 deployments since the beginning of August, reaching a grand total of 1,864. However, a closer reading of the figures reveals that almost all […]
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Every PCT to miss Choose and Book target
The Department of Health (DH) has admitted that not a single primary care trust in England is likely to be in a position to meet its next Choose and Book target and is relying on paper solutions to deliver its flagship policy on choice at referral. Just over 6,000 bookings have been made through Choose […]
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GP negotiators considering extra C+B incentives
GP representatives and the health department’s pay negotiators are looking at ways that GPs can be paid through the GMS contract for taking on Choose and Book. The government’s key NHS policy on patient choice is dependent on the widespread uptake of Choose and Book but so far very few GPs have been prepared to […]
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Communication key to cutting missed appointments
A new survey of GP surgeries by health education charity Developing Patient Partnerships and the Institute of Healthcare Management indicates 10 million GP appointments a year being missed as well as around 5 million practice nurse appointments. DPP estimates the cost of missed GP appointments at £180 million per years, based on each appointment […]
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