Related Articles
There were 125 million outpatient appointments in 2023 alone and NHS providers, including hospitals and GP services regularly communicate with patients and staff through mail.
Letters are often a key part of communicating with patients any appointments, changes or cancellations, test results, referrals, and treatment plans, and these can often be time sensitive such as if scans are involved.
Mr Hunt, the Chancellor, pledged to make the NHS paperless by 2018 when he was the health secretary.
This was pushed back two years by the NHS as part of a five-year plan, but the health service has not renewed its target to go fully digital since the Covid-19 pandemic hit.
‘At the mercy of the Royal Mail’
National Voices, a health charity advocating for patients, said letters “must remain a priority” but without the NHS being “at the mercy of the Royal Mail”.
Jacob Lant, its chief executive, said: “Any delays in delivering letters can create anxiety for patients and if appointments are missed it can cause a dangerous disruption to people’s care. For the NHS, missed appointments waste both money and time.”
He said: “NHS mail is a basic essential and must remain a priority. A modern health service fit for the future would not be at the mercy of Royal Mail to communicate with patients.”
The Royal Mail has said it is “committed to working with a range of NHS bodies to explore options that could provide more reliability for time-sensitive medical letters”.
It said these could include marked envelopes, barcodes and a hybrid product where doctors would decide if it “warrants a speedy delivery”.
Source link
