The Oliver Zangwill Centre Saga

You may remember that my consultant had said that it would take forever to get an appointment at Addenbrooke's to see a neuropsychologist so perhaps my PHI policy might stump up for a private referral. Swiss Life refused to play however so Beth and I decided to do it anyway and pay for it ourselves so we asked our GP if he could refer me. He spoke to my consultant's secretary and we then discovered the real story: Addenbrooke's had no neuropsychologist (they're thin on the ground nationally apparently) however had we thought about the Oliver Zangwill Centre (OZC) at Ely? GP speaks to them. Yup, I'm just the sort of case they can help with, they can see me, fairly quickly ("March or April") and on the NHS too, not privately (they don't do private).

Super.

How The NHS Market Works

So time passes. No sign on an appointment. So in mid-March I pop in to see my GP. He's had a copy of a letter from OZC to someone at our NHS trust. And this is where the fun starts. Bear in mind that this is all NHS, i.e. funded out of our income tax. But OZC is a different NHS trust so they have to ask my NHS trust if they will fund my referral to their NHS trust so that money can be moved about.

Sigh. OK. It's all very silly but if that's the way it is then fair enough. And OZC state in their letter that I have a provisional appointment date of 12th May - can my trust reply by 14th April confirming that they're happy?

... And How It Doesn't

More time passes and I've still not got a letter from OZC confirming my appointment and there's only two weeks to go. So I go to see my GP again. He suggests I phone OZC. I do. Apparently they have five other cases from other NHS trusts also provisionally booked for 12th May. They can only actually see one person that day but the only way to get trusts to respond in a timely manner is to lie about dates.

However despite the deadline for replies being two weeks ago not only have they not had a reply from my trust but nor have they had one from any of them.

OZC says that assuming my trust do reply they should be able to see me "by the end of June".

Arggghhhh! I'm at a loss to see how all this arsing about is benefitting anyone. It's just wasting people's time moving paper about and it's not even doing that well: the paper moving system is clearly badly broken.

Unsurprisingly chasing this gets me stressed and makes my problems worse, but the time OZC phone me back (a day later than they promised) I'm barely coherent on the phone to them.

I call in my PALS

At the advice of doctors on CIX I got my local PALS involved in the process. PALS is a new service which is meant to help patients in precisely these sort of situations and, to their credit, they seem to have unstuck things however at the time I'm writing (mid-May) I still don't have an appointment, but I'm told it's going to be a Monday in July.