New standards for patient communication – and they’re low

Copperfield finds the new 28-day patient communication standards for hospitals encouraging, until he looks at the small print and realises that GPs will likely be picking up the pieces

So, bad news and good news this week.

In ‘bad’, we hear that GPs are taking ‘specialist training’ to feel safe practising under mandated A&G. Which is an interesting approach. What next? Rejecting the concept of shared care by volunteering to do all of it? The opposite of collective action must be collective co-operation, and now we know what that looks like.

The better news is that hospitals are apparently going to be held to new standards for patient communication. I’d like to think that ‘held’ means ‘at gunpoint’, but I have my doubts.

Because the very positive sounding obligation for hospitals to inform patients of the outcome of their referral within 28 days gets murkier the more you probe the guidance.

For a start, those holding printed copies of the original version will exploit ambiguity about when that 28-day clock starts ticking, exactly – when we make our SPA referral, or at the point the hospital ordains whether to fob us off with A&G or grudgingly agree to see the patient, regardless of how long that decision process takes.

The online version has ironed that out now, so I can’t share with you those original delicious layers of irony: that this attempt to a) Give patients clear, consistent and supportive communication b) Stop them getting lost in the system had a) Communicated to me nothing but confusion b) Lost me in conflicting guidance.

Never mind, there’s more for us to get our teeth into. Specifically, what happens when secondary care inevitably fails to achieve whatever version of the guidance they’re following. Here, at least, there is clarity.

Trusts should assess their current performance (I can help them there if they need it), set out their approach to meeting the standards and expect a stocktake in six months. So they’re bound to take it seriously.

And what if they don’t, and patients are left wondering what happened to that 28-day promise? They should: ‘First try to contact the provider for an update’. That’ll be the phone that’s never answered, the secretary that doesn’t exist or the PALS that has gone AWOL. In which case, and you’ll be absolutely amazed by this: ‘Your practice can advise on what to do next.’

I can? Oh yes, of course, in the spirit of collective co-operation, I can and I will.

After all, the advice won’t be difficult: go private or go pray.

Dr Tony Copperfield is a GP in Essex