"I would have preferred contact in person"

Dear Jean-Pierre

Thanks for getting in touch. I am really sorry your contact with the cardiology service wasn't as good as it could have been for you. I took your message to our management group today hence the delay in replying to your feedback.

Although as a team we previously discussed increasing the routine availability of video consultations using Near Me we have been restricted by availability of staff to support our patients to use this service. Perhaps we were being over cautious but we didn't want our patients to get an appointment letter for Near Me and find they couldn't make it work for them. When GPs indicated to us that a face to face appointment was required we provided this, and we have continued to see patients face to face where we can. However, the majority of our appointments, like yours, have been over the telephone and whilst that's good for many, clearly it's not right for everyone and we fully understand the need to improve on this.

What have we done?

We have enabled our clinics with the appropriate technology to let near me consultations take place.

We have confirmed arrangements for additional administrative support and I am confident we will be able to increase supported access to video consultation very soon - I am expecting access to improve within the next 6 weeks.

We've reminded colleagues to offer Near Me appointments to patients if they are seeing them for a further appointment.

Thanks for the prompt to redouble our efforts in this area.

I hope you are doing well and don't require further cardiology input but if you do, Near Me should be available to you. If it isn't, let me know!