C&B records highest monthly usage figure

Choose and Book has recorded its highest monthly usage figure, with 58% of all first outpatient referrals made via the system.

NHS Connecting for Health’s latest validated figures for the first two months of this year show an increase in usage of the system from 50% to 58%.

CfH said monthly booking volumes had also risen over the last 12 months by 14% for first outpatient referrals and 18% in total.

The Department of Health’s IT agency announced last month that 20m bookings have now been made through the system, which CfH said was a significant milestone for the e-booking programme.

Figures for February 2010 also show that the number of published services on Choose and Book has risen 7% to more than 34,000 and the number of clinicians who have used the system for at least one booing has risen by 8.5% to more than 41,000.

The next release of Choose and Book, release 4.3, is due to go live at the end of this week.

The new release will include improvements to referral screens and referrer worklists to make them easier to use.

There will also be new functionality to alert GPs when a patient does not attend or a Unique Booking Reference Number is cancelled by someone other than the referrer.

Hospitals will also be able to receive more information about the reasons for cancellation of an appointment.

Other changes include changes to slot reservation to enable providers to reserve new slots for a maximum of two days before wider release and improvements to print outs for patients.

The Liberal Democrats have pledged to turn Choose and Book into a “simple online booking system” while the Conservative Party has said it would overhaul the system to include new providers as well as making changes to the system for referring to named consultants.