New Ways

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the 'New Ways' project?
What is considered to be best practice for booking appointments and admissions?
Is New Ways mandatory for services such as Mental Health, Allied Health Professional's, Nurse-led clinics etc.?
How are queries about New Ways guidance handled?
What happens to New Ways once the implementation project has finished?

If a patient currently has an ASC due to unavailability and will still be unavailable on 1 January 2008, what should be recorded?
If a patient has an ASC, and will transfer as 'unvailable' at 1 January 2008 but has no planned review date recorded, when should they be reviewed?
What should happen if a patient with an ASC is available from 1 January 2008?
During the migration to the New Ways compliant PAS, what are the guidelines for the re-setting of the clock for patients with an ASC who are now available?

What should happen if the hospital has to cancels the patient's appointment or admission?

What data needs to be included in first, and subsequent, 'live' submissions of New Ways data?
When do I have to start to submit live data in to the warehouse?
For many of our patients who were managed pre New Ways, we have no information on offers and unavailability. How should this be handled?

Our clinics are in remote areas, therefore they only held once every 8 weeks, do we still need to make two 'reasonable offers' of appointment

Does New Ways change how waiting times are measured?
Could I measure waiting times from date of referral?
When should a patient be added to the waiting list, at the decision to treat or at a pre-operative assessment clinic?
How will return outpatients for procedure be distinguished from 'ordinary' return outpatients?
How will a patient's waiting time be calculated under New Ways?
Should I be recording all non-emergency patients, even if they have a very short wait?
Where a patient is booked directly onto a clinic list, what date should be used as the 'Date referral received' where a referral letter is not received until after the patient is seen?
What is the correct format of codes for recording Allied Health Professionals (AHP)?

What is non-attendance?
What happens if a patient contacts the service to say that they cannot attend (CNA) and wish to reschedule?
What happens if the patient fails to attend (DNA) after agreeing an appointment / admission?
What if the patient has a valid reason for not attending?
What should happen when patients 'Could Not Wait'?

We use Patient Focussed Booking (PFB) and in discussion with the patient the agreed date may not always be the first two dates available. Should there be any period of unavailability recorded?
What should we record when a patient fails to respond to a PFB invitation?

Will New Ways be used to measure the cardiac (GP to intervention via Rapid Access Chest Pain Clinic) and cataract patient journey?

Do the terms 'patient's health board area', 'patient's area', and 'their area of residence' are used all mean the same thing?

What should happen if a patient is found to be unfit at a pre-operative assessment?

Are patients on the GP to intervention via Rapid Access Chest Pain Clinic (RACPC) pathway considered 'urgent' at all stages and therefore not appropriate to give them 21 days notice of appointments and admissions?

What is a reasonable offer?
We send patients a letter offering an appointment date and ask them to contact us if that date isn't suitable. Does this mean we now have to offer two dates in our letter?
Should the patient be referred back to their GP if they decline both dates offered?
We regularly have slots become available at short notice. Does this mean we should no longer offer these slots?
Is it not unfair to ask these patients to make what may be long journeys, to attend a clinic when, if they wait a bit longer, they will be seen a lot nearer home?
What should happen if a patient requests to be seen by a specific clinician even when there is no clinical requirement to do so?
How much notice should we give patients before we can assume implied acceptance to a written offer?

If a patient attends an appointment and then is subsequently removed from the waiting list what date the should be recorded as the removal date?
When should I use ?Removal reason ? 59 Transferred to another NHS Board area? (WT28 ?Reason for removal from list?)?
When we refer patients to the Golden Jubilee National Hospital or to a private hospital, what do we record under WT28 'Reason for removal from list'?

We transfer patients between hospitals within our NHS Board area on a daily basis, how should this be recorded under New Ways?
Why does information on transfers from our hospitals require to be collected?

What is unavailability?
What if a patient is unavailable at the time the decision to treat them is made?
What if a patient becomes unavailable when they are already on a waiting list?
What happens if the patient is still unavailable after their 13 week review?
Can a single waiting list period have multiple periods of unavailability?
Should unavailability be recorded retrospectively?
Can appointments be made within a period of unavailability?
A patient is socially unavailable due to holidays, however they will also be unavailable for a number of weeks before the actual holiday date due to the recuperation period required. How should this be recorded?
Is it mandatory to record the end date of an unavailability period?

We do our data validation for SMRs locally, yet under New Ways data validation is done centrally - why the change?

When a clinic is only held one day a week, and the patient is unable to attend only on that day, what unavailability should be recorded?

Main contact: Email

Glossary

Help

Data Dictionary
a link to the page containing the ISD Website Policy and Legal information