Letters: Practice of good admin on critical list at NHS Lothian

SO NHS Lothian has been massaging waiting lists – not just muddling them. NHS Lothian patients don’t have to be in these specific queues to experience waiting list aberrations.

Other factors can delay diagnosis or treatment. Your notes, marked up by a consultant who has just examined you, can lie for weeks, his/her instructions not activated, on a ward or on an absent secretary’s desk.

This may lose you further treatment altogether, if you do not show up at a clinic appointment and you are struck off the clinic list, forfeiting all further monitoring or treatment. If you are lucky enough to learn of the striking off, and your GP takes time to investigate, it can, as an example, emerge that the clinic has had three versions of you on its books through permutations of variant names, date of birth or address, and sent an appointment letter to a wrong one.

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Data-entry double checking? Routine sifting, categorising, if necessary routing of documentation at the end of medical sessions . . . do these still figure?

Clear procedure guidelines are things good admin staff set store by, particularly when work involves task-sharing, collaboration of departments, time pressure.

Haphazard “procedures” blur cock-up/conspiracy lines.

Marian J McKellar, Easter Dalry Road, Edinburgh

Big splash turns into a bellyflop

MY friends and I took our kids to the new Commie pool, and to say I was disappointed is an understatement.

Staff were perfect in every way although the facilities and pool in general were basic and mediocre. A sum of £37 million has supposedly been spent yet all that’s been done is cosmetic.

Diving boards moved round (unnecessary), the large pool basic and the same as before, the baby pool basic with absolutely no facilities for the kids. My boy and my friend’s kids and others in general were bored.

Changing rooms were nice and modern yet cramped in some areas. Food was basic and with not a lot of variety, then at the play area we were told to wait 50 minutes until the next session.

I assumed that when Leith Waterworld was closed we would be getting a pool that would be great for the Commonwealth yet beneficial and fun for the city’s kids.

The cost was pricey, the flumes have been removed and all the fun has been sucked from what should be a great day out for the kids.

Paul Fraser, Edinburgh

Cup belongs to Hampden Park

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REGARDING David Coutts’ letter (March 26), while there might be some economic and social benefits to hosting a potential Scottish Cup Final between Hibs and Hearts at Murrayfield, I would have thought most fans of these clubs would much rather the inconvenience and extra expense of travelling through to Glasgow to witness what would be a historical event.

The Scottish Cup Final is a fixture that first and foremost is associated with Hampden, the home of Scottish football, and to play it anywhere else just wouldn’t be right, regardless of who contested the final.

Angus McGregor, Albion Road, Edinburgh

Stop scare stories over referendum

I WISH Opposition parties would stop scaremongering over the independence referendum.

David Mundell, the Tory party’s only MP in Scotland, says mass immigration may occur if folk vote for independence. He does not explain how this would occur. Why would thousands of people move to Scotland when they are not doing so right now?

And Trident missiles and nuclear waste are in Scotland without a referendum.

Trevor Swistchew, Victor Park Terrace, Edinburgh