Choose and Book record for daily bookings

A record number of daily bookings were made through Choose and Book following its latest upgrade, NHS Connecting for Health has announced.

The IT agency says Choose and Book 4.1 was implemented on 18 October and 28,107 bookings were made on the next week day.

The upgrade includes improvements to rejected bookings, work lists and reports plus changes to attachment descriptions, full screen displays and Directory of Services screens to make the system more intuitive.

In addition, users now have access to an alerts page on the Choose and Book website, which provides them with information on the system, training, availability and planned maintenance.

CfH said the improvements had been largely determined by the users of the software following consultation in all ten strategic health authorities.

Dr Stephen Miller, medical director of the Choose and Book programme and a London GP, said: “This upgrade was the result of months of design, development, testing and implementation planning.

“This proves we are committed to making the Choose and Book software as efficient and easy to use as possible. We’re building an electronic referral service that will help the NHS offer real choice, and better, safer care to patients."

CfH said all NHS hospitals in England are now using Choose and Book, as are 93% of practices. It says 107,000 referrals are now being made through the system each week. The total number of referrals made through Choose and Book has now passed the 10m mark.

Dr Miller said: “Choose and Book is steadily becoming the everyday method of referral across the NHS.”

Choose and Book’s next system upgrade, Release 4.2, is due to be implemented in mid-2009. CfH says this release will introduce a new Finding Services Effectively functionality, making it easier for referrers to search and select services.