Health chiefs warn Royal Mail plan to cut deliveries could ‘worsen patient safety risks’
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Health chiefs warn Royal Mail plan to cut deliveries could ‘worsen patient safety risks’

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Plans to cut the variety of Royal Mail deliveries could worsen patient safety dangers, the leaders of organisations together with NHS Providers and Healthwatch England have stated.

Royal Mail has proposed that top quality mail be stored as a six-days-a-week service however that second class letter deliveries be cut dramatically.

The firm is proposing that every one non-first class letter deliveries – together with second class and bulk enterprise mail, equivalent to payments and statements – are cut to each different weekday.

The chief executives of Healthwatch England, National Voices, The Patients Association and NHS Providers – the primary nationwide organisations that advocate for the wants of NHS sufferers, in addition to the membership physique of all NHS trusts in England – have “raised direct concerns with Royal Mail that this worrying plan may worsen patient safety risks”.

The plans are a part of Royal Mail’s submission to regulator Ofcom, which is consulting on reforms of the common postal service.

In a joint letter revealed in The Daily Telegraph, the chief executives stated: “Provisional Healthwatch data suggest that more than two million people may have missed medical appointments in 2022-23 due to late delivery of letters, and this will only deteriorate under the proposed new plans.

“We have made it clear that if the plans go ahead, a solution must be found to prioritise the huge numbers of letters sent from NHS teams, otherwise more people will miss time-critical appointments, appointment changes or vital test results.

“Along with patient safety risks, this will impact NHS teams as well, with previous estimates on the cost of missed hospital appointments sitting at more than £1 billion every year – on top of the disruption for staff and other patients.”

The letter is signed by chief executives Louise Ansari of Healthwatch England, Jacob Lant of National Voices, Rachel Power of The Patients Association and Sir Julian Hartley of NHS Providers.

It comes after readers of the newspaper complained of doubtless missed appointments, claiming that “Royal Mail holds the public in contempt” and is “risking our health”.

One claimed the corporate “provides a poor service that now costs us even more to use – I hope that there will be an improvement” whereas one other described Royal Mail as “a disappointment”.

A Royal Mail spokesman stated: “We know how important receiving NHS letters is to many people.

“When letter volumes have declined from 20 billion in 2004/5 to just seven billion today, it is vital that the universal service is reformed so that we can protect the one-price-goes-anywhere service that many organisations, including the NHS, rely on.”

The spokesman added: “The NHS is made up of hundreds of different trusts and thousands of GPs as well as other services, each with varied requirements.

“We will continue to offer a choice of service levels and prices to suit their needs.

“We are working with a range of NHS bodies to explore options for time-sensitive medical letters as part of our proposals, such as distinctively marked envelopes, use of barcodes and adapting our existing hybrid product (used by a third of GPs) as part of our proposals.”

He stated the corporate has spent “significant time” to perceive what is required from reform, together with speaking to greater than 3,500 clients, companies, a spread of organisations and totally different elements of the NHS, together with NHS trusts and NHS consultant organisations together with Healthwatch England.

A spokesman for the regulator has stated all of the suggestions can be rigorously thought of earlier than an replace is given in the summertime.

Under its common service obligation (USO), Royal Mail should ship letters six days every week to all 32 million addresses within the UK for the value of a stamp.

Royal Mail has lengthy been urging the Government and Ofcom to assessment its obligations, arguing that it’s not workable or price efficient, given the decline in addressed letter submit.

In a long-awaited report in January, Ofcom revealed choices for an overhaul of the common postal service that could see Royal Mail’s letter supply service slashed from six days to 5, and even three, every week.

Another possibility mooted was to lengthen letter supply instances, with a dearer next-day supply service out there when required.

The proposals sparked an outcry, with ministers fast to dismiss any suggestion that the Government would sanction the scrapping of Saturday deliveries.

The six-days-a-week service is a part of the common service requirement stipulated by regulation below the Postal Services Act 2011.

Royal Mail additionally stated in its submission that it could change all customary bulk mail – equivalent to payments and statements – to a second class service, which means they arrive inside three weekdays as a substitute of two.

It added that it could like to add new reliability targets, in addition to “revised, realistic” velocity objectives, and add monitoring to common service parcels.

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