Having received a letter from NHS England, inviting you to book an appointment at a vaccination centre or community pharmacy, you go online to www.nhs.uk/covid-vaccination. Unfortunately, both your initial jab and the booster (at least 11 weeks later) have to be booked together. This makes it extremely difficult to succeed.
You go through the following sequence:
- Click Book my appointments
- Enter your NHS number
- Enter your date of birth
- Enter your postcode
- Check any access needs
- Select nearest vaccination centre (if there are any, otherwise check back regularly)
- Click through dates to find one that is still available (AM/PM)
- Choose a time range – e.g. 9-10 (if there are none showing, someone might have already got in before you)
- Choose an arrival time – e.g. 9:20am
- Would you like to go to the same place to get your 2nd dose? Yes
For those that do manage to reach the page which says Check your appointments before booking then click “Accept and book”, any celebrations might be premature.
Because, in the meantime, one of your slots has been given to someone else, so your entire booking attempt is rejected.
Surely the 1st appointment slot should be reserved for 5 minutes to give time for the second slot to be booked and the entire appointment confirmed?
The system is clearly designed to ensure every slot is filled (due to shelf-life of vaccine?), whilst wasting everyone’s time with repeated attempts over many days/weeks. Not to mention electricity wasted and CO2 generated by the continual unnecessary computer/smartphone use.
Addendum
A week later, our local health centre sent SMS texts to us, asking us to visit https://qhealth.io/patient to book first vaccination appointments at our local Health Centre. Appointments made first time, quickly and easily. Unfortunately shows how much slicker commercial IT operations can be compared to public sector IT.
