'Choose & Book' - I think not!

"My arse!" as Ricky Tomlinson so luridly puts it whenever someone suggests something good will come of anything the Government intends. And how right he can be!

'Choose & Book' - you know it perhaps? The first line of the NHS's wonderful all-singing, all-dancing ICT 'Spine' that will revolutionalise health care in this country. Never again will you be able to sprain your ankle in the Highlands without the local GP knowing that seventeen years ago you were the subject of a range of invasive, if ultimately inconclusive, tests at the hands of a physician in Cornwall. Vital knowledge you'll agree in treating a minor lower limb injury!

So there I am at my GP's place somewhen last week closing in on the notion that a referral to an ENT specialist was the thing to do. So far so agreed and simple. Up then comes a computer screen with a list of nine or so possible hospitals to 'choose' from. Now choice, if it is to be choice at all, must be 'informed choice.' The only information in my possession is a sure and certain knowledge that I'll never set foot inside Newchurch - our local abattoir - again. (H and I are as one on this, as on most things happily.)

So I say as much to the GP, along the lines of 'She's the expert, she knows these places and I don't. So please tell me where is good for ENT.' (I do add that if she knows of a good establishment in Grenada I'm happy as long as the NHS will pick up the travel bill.) She then mentions another not-distant place, offering it a good two rosettes for convenience and service, so I am at once sold. Happy to take her choice.

She then dispatches an e-mail at once and I naively comment "That was easy." But no, that it seems is just the first step on the 'patient journey' - a long and as rocky a road as ever it was. I'm handed a sheaf of forms with reference numbers and passwords and informed that the next vital steps are up to me. Either I'm to telephone a dread call-centre number or, if I'm really daring, log on to the Internet and do it all electronically.

Ordinarily I would opt for the human-to-human contact, or as near as one ever can get to it when in conversation with a call-centre drone, but as I happen to be online this evening I thought I'd test the system that way. Early signs are promising: the web address given on the form is actually the correct one [not always guaranteed with Government forms], navigation is none too burdensome and the due appointments page pops up at the first attempt.

So there I am selecting dates for the coming 28 days - that being the time I will have to wait as a maximum - but oddly the machine merely replies 'No appointments available. Please try different dates or contact your GP.' OK so it's near Christmas and perhaps clinics have pre-Christmas panic rushes as does everywhere and everyone else. Opting to be understanding of this putative problem I ask for an appointment within eight weeks. No can do says the machine, flashing up once again the same sad message.

Not overly impressed I try for three then six months - all to the same negative effect. In an icy moment of malice I finally ask for any appointment in the next three years. Well, need I have asked? Of course not. Nothing doing.

Hmmmm, time to phone the call centre. Human Bean answers fairly swiftly, but then asks me if I have a different telephone number! Well no, I have the number I have and that is why I've rung it! Not a good start. Then jauntily I explain the problems I'm having with the Internet to which she replies perhaps I could try logging on later. No, I affirm, the Net has had its chance and let me down so let us go the old-fashioned route and do this now one-to-one, voice-to-voice.

"But the system is down," she tells me. "Why don't you log on later?" Well, this came as news. There was no mention of malfunction on the computer page, merely endless spurning of my reasonable request. So, yet again I explain that I'm done with the Internet, let us proceed in person.

"But I can't access the system either," she wails. "The system is down, don't you see?" Clearly wanting to end the call and record it as a point-scoring 'contact completed' unit, I'm hustled off the line with a "Log on later" rebuke.

I shan't - on principle - be logging on a second time. The Spine has proved, as I feared it might, spineless and I'll be back to the GP next week to request her to make the appointment for me, as in the Good Old Days.

Choose & Book? My arse!