What you can do:

Due to increased waiting times for outpatient appointments, GPs have seen a rise in patient requests to “expedite” or speed up their hospital referral and appointments. We urge all our patients awaiting hospital appointments to be patient and wait to be contacted.

As a GP surgery, we are not notified of any waiting times for clinics or provided with hospital hotline numbers. If your appointment has been delayed please contact your consultant’s secretary for any updates. If you are waiting for your first appointment with a consultant and have not heard for a long time, please contact the outpatient department in the first instance and then the consultant’s secretary. If you have been unable to contact outpatients or the secretary, please contact PALS (Patient Advice and Liaison Service):

Overview – The Great Western Hospital – NHS (www.nhs.uk)

Written Requests to Expedite Appointments

Patients are often requested by the Hospital to obtain a letter from the GP so their appointment can be expedited. Please note that waiting a longer time for an appointment does not in itself make your request urgent. According to figures from NHS England, a total of 7.7 million people were waiting to start treatment at the end of September 2023, the highest since records began in August 2007.

We are unable to write letters to expedite your appointment solely because you have been waiting for a long time: doing so would be unfair to all those on the waiting list. Clinical need must always trump length of wait when it comes to waiting lists, so if you are experiencing worsening of your symptoms, we advise you to contact your specialist directly so they can assess your condition and make the necessary arrangements if it is clinically appropriate to expedite your appointment. If you have difficulty in accessing your consultant, we advise you to contact PALS for assistance.