How to jump the health queue.

Dispatches worked with seven volunteers caught up in hospital waiting lists to find out what response patients received when seeking to expedite their appointments. After observing the patients own attempts to speed up their appointments the Dispatches investigators took over the task. This clearly demonstrated the frustrations involved in dealing with the hospital appointments system. These included being passed from one department to another with no satisfactory outcome; discovering that the patients records have not been passed on, or had been lost; confusion over a pathology test; and a patient having been removed from a waiting list without his knowledge. Direct intervention by channel 4, with the threat of media exposure, proved a most effective means of expediting patients appointments with consultants. As for queue jumping, it became apparent that the system was in such confusion that it could hardly be called a system nor did there seem to be any fair regulation of the 'queue'.