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Devon Tree Preservation Society

Outstandingly bad bits of NHS paper

Contents | Up: Main | DS1500 | Maternity Records | Fund-holding application | Twinrix | A Dental example |
FP17R Just because this is mainly a GMP site doesn't mean we should ignore the problems of NHS Dentists.
There are several left despite their admirable response to the previous Government's offer that they could carry on working for the NHS if they didn't mind being paid less.
The FP17R is an A5 form similar to the GMS1, patients sign it to be accepted for treatment on the NHS - surely a worthy objective.
In some ways dental (GDP) information technology is ahead of GMP technology. A high proportion of NHS dentists are linked to the Dental Estimates Board by EDIFACT transmissions, no doubt saving much time and effort for the NHS administration.
In fact, since all that is required on the FP17R is the patients name and minimal distinguishing details, and their signature to constitute a contract, like the GMS1, and since exactly those details have to be typed into the registration screen of the GDP's software, the dental software prints out the FP17R ready for the patient to sign (unlike medical software, boo, hiss)
Enter the dead hand of NHS administration! How are the FP17R forms supplied? Tractor feed you say - no, single sheets BUT GLUED TOGETHER!
All advantages of speed and efficiency in entering details once, and printing them out onto the form for the patient to sign, with no doubt an expression of thanks at not having to handwrite them, have been skillfully nullified by providing the forms in pads with the top edge glued, so that all over the country expensive dental assistants are being (ultimately) paid by the NHS to peel forms apart, trim the edges, and stack them up again for printing.

Outstanding.

Twinrix - the new combined Hepatitis A and B vaccine was the subject of a memo circulated to all Practices.
Many trees died and found unwanted places on our desks to tell us that although Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B are both claimable in bulk without FP10s, the combined form is to still have an FP10 completed and sent to Newcastle.
Presumably this is to neutralise any advantage in time and convenience in using the combined product, and ensure the PPA continues to be hard-pressed to handle all its paper.

A dead tree protest has been sent to Mr Colin Pearson at the NHSE (since the inhabitants of that org are not noted for handling e-mail or faxes in preference to actual crisp white paper.
Shortly after the building was completed it was discovered to be too small - perhaps a little intelligent diminution of paper would solve that problem for them?

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A Doctor writes:-

"The DS1500 is a disgrace. The civil servants who arrange the payment get all the irrelevant (to them) medical details and the bit of card separating differing copies is so thin that if Mrs Smith has bronchial carcinoma the next patient has it too - as well as a brain tumour while the third has a testicular tumour. How the seventh manages to have ovarian cancer too is beyond me !"

It is disgusting.

A while back I wrote to the BA to tell them they needed to redraft their DLA forms to make it clear that DS1500s were for people who were likely to die before the BA might otherwise process their application - not just a quick way to get a normal one done - got back a sniffy letter which I have kept telling me that if a patient asked for a DS1500 I was to just fill it in and let them worry about it.

Recently they have changed their tune and now want us to fend off the ridiculous requests - still no sign of changing the form design to make it less trouble producing. Follow the rules as written on that one I would say, until the forms are all sorted out, DS1500 included.

Q. Who designed the DS1500? Who chaired the committee which decided to adopt it? Who was the Minister responsible?

e-mail me with any answers Contents

The N&E Devon Health Authority 8th wave (community) fund-holding application form.

Having written and called to say the Practice will join the 8th wave, and after a week of attempting to obtain the form required which was out of print having been redesigned:-

the contents of the form are entirely items of information the HA already holds and mostly determines itself regardless of what GPs say - for instance list size
With the single exception of the line on which to sign a statement that "I wish to join the community fund-holding scheme" - which of course was what the original message to them had said.

A sick culture, surely.

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Your example goes here...

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"Give me today a report on one half of one sheet of paper". W Churchill 1944

"Send me a short e-mail". A Midgley 1997

September 1997 | Up: Devon Tree Preservation Soc |