Hi Sue,

Great to hear that you have got stuck in and involved all the circle-of-control stakeholders in the conversation from the start including patients, and have started from their perspective. It can be a bit humbling to do that and the trap is to jump to solutions before establishing a diagnosis.

I was working with a primary care team last year who wanted to improve their booking system (the plan is to have a centralised one eventually). So, one thing I asked them to do was to step into the shoes of a patient and phone their own practice at 08:00 and try to book a same-day appointment. After that frustrating experience they had a bit of an “oh dear” when I pointed out that 1000 of their patients per week were having exactly that experience – and >99% do not complaining – possibly because it has been like that for so long that they just accept it as inevitable.

It is not inevitable. It is the direct consequence of the design of the system and it is avoidable.

Not surprisingly, the primary care team didn’t believe that it was possible for them to improve it themselves until I demonstrated how to do it in practice. Then they had a big “ah ha” and took off like a rocket.

So, if you do get stuck please don’t give up … just phone-a-friend … that is part of the co-production philosophy … learning from each other.

And I’d love to hear how you get on. Will you post updates?