Although the Constitution sets out your legal rights you also have an important part to play throughout your journey as a patient:

• If your treatment is routine make sure that you are available for the next 18 Weeks
• If you are planning a holiday of more than two weeks or have other commitments, you and your GP may decide not to refer you until you are available. Hospitals can be penalised if you are not treated within 18 Weeks and it is unfair of you to accept an appointment if you are going on a long holiday or need to think if you are ready to receive a diagnosis. You can ask for your referral to begin when you return from holiday or when you are ready to commit
• Make sure that you keep your contact details up to date, if you move house or change your contact numbers inform your GP. This will assist the Hospital to contact you to arrange your appointments.

• If you accept an appointment make sure that you attend – Patients who do not attend their appointments are taking a valuable appointment that another patient could have attended.
• If you know that you can’t attend an arranged appointment, contact the Hospital as soon as possible to rearrange.
• If you change your appointment twice and then try to rearrange again, the Hospital is entitled to refer you back to your GP.
• If you do not attend your very first appointment for the condition that you have been referred for, you will be discharged from the waiting list and referred back to whoever referred you. If you then decide that you do want to see a specialist, whoever referred you must begin the process all over again.

• Whilst you are sat with your GP in their surgery, the GP may access and book an appointment for you through ‘Choose and Book’. This is a National electronic referral service which gives you a choice of place, date and time for your first Outpatient appointment in a Hospital or clinic of your choice.

• You may receive a letter with an appointment reference number and a password. You can then book, change or cancel your appointment by telephone or online.

Once you have been referred into a Hospital, you will follow a pathway until you are treated or discharged. A common pathway is;

• First Outpatient appointment (usually within 6 weeks of referral)
• A diagnostic test of some kind i.e. X-rays e.g. CT/MRI/Ultrasound, Echocardiograms (ECG’s) nerve conduction studies, Endoscopies (usually within 6 weeks)
• You may receive notification at this stage that everything is normal and therefore you will be discharged back to the care of your GP
• Or you may receive a follow up appointment to discuss the results of your test and the next steps
• If you then require surgery to treat your condition you will probably need a pre-admission appointment to make sure that you are fit for surgery
• You will either receive your surgery as a day case patient, in which case you can go home on the same day that you receive your surgery or as an Inpatient where you will be given a date to be admitted to Hospital to receive your treatment
• Treatment could be medication, a tube of cream, advice, surgery or other interventions
• If you fail to attend any of these appointments, the Hospital are allowed to discharge you back to your GP and you will no longer be under the care of the Hospital.

If you think you have waited too long for your appointment, contact the number on the letter that you received to ask why? If you are still not satisfied you can contact the Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS) office at the Hospital that you are waiting to attend. The telephone number should be on the Hospital website or you can telephone the Hospital and ask to be put through to the PALS office.