Welcome To The 21st Century

I called my GP surgery today to ask for a repeat prescription. I was staggered by their response: email the request.

If it's surprising to see the NHS finally reach the computer age (I can also view my blood results on-line, though there seems to be no cohesion between departments, the website I use is for renal patients only) you would hope that a major telecoms company has their shit together, unfortunately this is often not the case. When I signed up with O2 broadband I had to use a different username and account to my mobile account. After a little while I was given the option to link the two accounts, but this does not mean that the two are integrated, just that I only have one username, I have to chose to switch between the accounts once I am logged in, despite the fact that I have a "My Broadband" link while using my mobile account.

Paypal are still sending out emails that look phishy, showing a link that looks like paypal.co.uk, but which actually links to email1.paypal.com/xyz.

I've had increasing levels of spam in my gmail inbox in the last couple of weeks, I can't remember the last time I saw a piece of spam before then. It started with one or two a day but rose to about 7 on Sunday. I haven't had any today or yesterday so hopefully that's the end of it.

Just Say No

Why can't people just say no? It's fine, sometimes the answer is "no", I understand, sometimes it's not possible, or it really is more than your job's worth, but please don't waste 15 minutes of my precious time trying to placate me. Just say no!

Case 1, Novotel Cardiff: When I complained that the internet charge was not clearly displayed on the website and requested a refund the slimy manager came out to see me, asked me if I'd like a drink and asked me to sit with him. He spent 15 minutes telling me in various ways that he would not waive the charge, nor refund me. The receptionist could have told me that!

Case 2, Medical Centre London: Having been prescribed 5 x 5mg tablets on the previous occasion, despite requesting 25mg tablets, I now requested a bottle of 100 5mg tablets (rather than the annoying individually sealed packs of 14). Unfortunately I was given a prescription for 25mg tablets, despite being on a daily dose of 20mg. Now the receptionist could have said "Sorry, only the doctor can alter your prescription." But no, not when she can waste 15 minutes of my time!

Case 3, Chemist's London: I took the prescription to the chemist anyway, hoping they might be out of 25mg tablets. Unfortunately not. Yet again I was treated to a 15 minute ear bashing and ended up leaving the shop while the woman was still talking at me.

Stupidity

I received a letter from my GP practice the other day requesting that I provide proof of my address as I had yet to do so. I rang today asking if receiving the letter was proof enough. The receptionist failed to see the hilarious irony of the situation, perhaps due to having to work on the 29th December and speak to idiots ringing up and taking the piss.

Gov In IT

My NHS booking saga continues. Having booked my hospital appointment last week and received a reminder to do so this morning I called up the NHS's booking line to let them know of the error. It turns out that as Guy's has its own booking department that is not part of the NHS's nationwide system and so I will continue to receive the reminders, no they can't be stopped, the only possible course of action is to cancel my booking, which was not recommended.

Choice Worse

I previously blogged about my joy at making a hospital appointment using the NHS's new CHOICE GOOD system. Well it seems I am in luck, my appointment doesn't seem to have registered with their system, as they've sent me a letter to ask me to do it, so maybe I can go through the whole thing again, yay!

Choice Bad

I've long believed that choice is a bad thing, choice is an opportunity to be unhappy, to feel hard done by, to regret your choosing. Choice is also an opportunity for mediocrity, to be a jack of all trades but master of none. I much prefer a pub offering four superb dishes to any restaurant offering a confusing plethora of options, as I'm sure Gordon Ramsay would agree. And so it was that I found myself confronting the NHS's Choose and Book site. It's always made me laugh hearing politicians tell us that patients want choice. Do they? Do they really? All I want is the earliest appointment at my local hospital. But to do this I had to login to the "healthspace" website using my reference number, birth year and ridiculous password. What did this give me? A phone number for Guy's Hospital! Which I called, and asked for the next available appointment. I'm so happy. I love choice me.

Oh, I almost forgot, When I first visited the site I was greeted with the following:

We are sorry, but the web browser you are using is not compatible with the online Choose and Book service.

We apologise unconditionally for any inconvenience caused by this problem and can assure that we are working to make sure that future versions of the Choose and Book online service work in as many types of browser as possible.

So I tried IE, same message, so I had to use IE 8 in version 7 mode just to login. And I had to do all that just to find out that I had to call Guy's.