Problems with the NHS patient portal used to book hospital appointments

Not really sure which sub-forum to post this in, but anyway....

Some of you may be familiar with the NHS patient portal, which is used to manage hospital appointments. This is not the NHS app.

Usually, you will receive a text message telling you of a new hospital referrals/appointment. The text comes with a link and a 4-digit PIN. You then sign in using your DOB and the PIN code so that you can see the appointment letter and confirm or cancel. This doesn't involve registering/signing up for this portal.

My question is: Has anyone managed to register to their NHS trust's patient portal with their email and password, so that they can see all their hospital appointments and the corresponding invite letters, instead of just having access to one letter/appointment? I can't seem to do it and I wonder if my trust has disabled registration for some reason.

 

I have not, however my NHS app shows all of these things - if I understand you correctly. You could try reddit r/nhs?

 

Thanks. Might post on Reddit. Are you saying you can see your hospital invite letters and then confirm, rebook, or cancel your hospital appointments in the NHS App? I can see letters from consultants etc in my NHS App, but this is different.

 

I have been able to confirm and book some referrals through the NHS app but not all, I had presumed that it depended on the way the different hospitals and services work and I haven’t tried to cancel and rebook through the app.

 

My local hospital uses the "MyChart" service which I can log in to with a username & password (separate from the NHS app's authentication flow); I can view & download appointment letters from there.

 

Thanks. I've not heard of this. Looks like it is only used by certain trusts.

 

Is this the mycare thing?

I’ve never really had this before until recently so created an account maybe spring/start of summer when I’d hit a text and saw what wasn’t a lot - a letter with an invite and the appointment

then remember at some point recentlyish getting a text (which I’d guess was letter after appt) and when I logged in it wasn’t there then another text and the same thing. But not worrying about it because letter than came through the post.

 

Like MyChart, I suspect MyCare is another version of a patient portal that some trusts are using. But no, in my case it is neither of these and it's just called the patient portal. It seems my issue is not going to apply to others because it's not the same software system / app.