"Disgraceful wait for a gastro appointment"

Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback following your referral via TRAQS.

I am disappointed to hear of your experience.

To answer your question - What is the point of TRAQS?

TRAQS was created in June 2012 as a 'referral hub' for all first outpatient appointments for further care from GP practices within the Telford and Wrekin area. TRAQS discusses Choice of provider with patients (unless, as in your case the referral is addressed to a specific consultant at a specific hospital) GPs have been provided with a supply of TRAQS leaflets which should be given to all patients who are to be referred for further care. This leaflet clearly explains what TRAQS is and how the referral process works. It seems from your comments that unfortunately your practice failed to provide you with a TRAQS leaflet. This leaflet also lets patients know that TRAQS will be attempting to contact them and to ask them to ensure that the practice have up to date contact information to enable TRAQS to discuss the Choice options the patients has. In this day and age it is understandable that patients are wary of people calling them. The leaflet reassures the patient that a call from TRAQS is not a 'cold call'

Our first attempt to contact patients is always via a phone call. Obviously without this essential information we are unable to contact the patient in a timely manner and therefore avoid unnecessary delay.

Unfortunately TRAQS do not have control over the internal processes of the hospitals and their waiting times. I am sorry that your appointment was booked at RSH instead of PRH and with a different consultant. However, this is not something which TRAQS could have foreseen or controlled.

We have recently changed our processes within TRAQS and endeavour to 'chase up' any queries with the hospital staff on behalf of the patient to avoid patients having to make numerous phone calls.

Thank you again for taking the time to bring your concerns to our attention. Please be assured that the TRAQS team take all comments, both positive or negative seriously as it helps us to develop the service further for the benefit of the patients within the Telford and Wrekin area.

I am really sorry to hear that you found the TRAQS service to be a pointless bureaucracy and I hope that they will respond to you direct about this. Your experience does not sound great, and whilst the consultant was polite and helpful I am particularly disappointed that the nurse at the hospital did not interrupt her conversation to speak to you. Frontline staff across the Trust are developing new customer service standards and your experience is a great example for this. I was talking with one of our outpatient nurses about this and she said "Sometimes an urgent clinical discussion should be completed as that is the right thing to do, but we all must give the patient our full attention as soon as possible and apologise politely for any delay and if possible explain the reason why, and we definitely must not put our personal conversations ahead of our patients needs during work time. A little courtesy goes a very long way. I have two basic rules: put myself in their shoes; treat others as I would wish to be treated myself". I hope that with the support of people like this nurse we can begin to eradicate experiences like yours.