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Fast, convenient and confidential
appointment booking at the Royal Free
A newly introduced 24 × 7 appointment-booking service for patients
needing to attend genito-urinary medicine (GUM) and sexual-health
clinics at the Royal Free Hospital in northwest London means they can
now make their appointments quickly, conveniently and in total privacy.
Appointments may be booked by phone call, text message or on the Web
during open hours and by text message or on the website out of hours.
Recent DoH directives require GUM and family planning services to
offer appointments within 48 hours. This has been difficult to meet
because of restricted access to available appointments and because many
patients are unable or unwilling to call or visit the clinics during
working hours, or, if they do, they cannot get through the telephone
queues quickly enough.
London-based applications-developer Software Medical with the
assistance of Avanquest and Computer Communications Limited, both based
in Hampshire, developed the new system, which was implemented with
funding help from NHS Innovations at the Royal Free.
The system provides automated booking of appointments over a 48-hour
period with a choice of three slots, followed by confirmation of the
choice made; text-messaging to dedicated numbers; Web interface;
collection of data for phases 2 and 3 of Payment by Results; and special
language and/or specialised service options.
Source: bjhc&im December 2006
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