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Making Choose and Book work for community paediatricians

October 2007

The Choose and Book system is a national service that, for the first time, combines electronic booking and a choice of place, date and time for first outpatient appointments. It allows patients to choose their initial hospital appointment, and book it on the spot in the surgery or later on the phone or via the internet.

Some community paediatric services are already using Choose and Book. These are mainly hospital hosted services. Those already using the system had concerns about the ‘Choose’ and the ‘Book’ elements. Would patients be able to choose services outside their own district? How could we make it simple for GPs to book appointments of appropriate length and with an appropriate person using direct booking? Anecdotes included paediatricians seeing referrals for orchidopexy and other surgical conditions in error.

In one area, 3 out of 5 referrals booked directly had been rejected because they were inappropriate. In another, half of all inappropriate referrals came through the Choose and Book system. And, of course, what about referrals from people other than GPs? Would they have access to Choose and Book, or would we need to run 2 parallel systems? We were offered the opportunity, through the BMA, to find out from the Choose and Book Team how to tackle some of these problems. Click on the PDF version to view the full article.