Escuela Oficial de Idiomas de Getafe

English - Students' Corner - Contributions

Back to Writing Assignments

Proposal Letter - Issue: Patient registration, by María C. Castaño (Av2 Mon, 2010-11) – 300 words

15th October, 2010

Dear Sir or Madam,

This proposal intends to address the problem of the medical appointments in local surgeries in the region of Madrid. It is based on my own observations, considering I live with elderly people. Also, I conducted a survey in my neighbourhood where the results were as expected.

A hundred per cent of the residents express their refusal to the new method of booking appointments. Elderly people give up, angry and complaining the answering machine does not recognize their date of birth. Young and middle aged people assert that this new method should be optional and coexisting with the previous one, to allow everybody to be able to book, with no restriction in age.

In other words, the latest measure carried out by the Public Health Service to provide a better service does not succeed in doing so. Despite the fact that an automatic phone call reception may provide the staff with some extra time to invest in other duties, I do not find any advantage for the patients, who end up having to go personally to the surgery after being totally unable to book their own appointments by means of the answering machine. In this way, what was intended to improve the service, contributes to just the opposite and collapses the current public medical centres.

Consequently, I suggest the new system should include an alternative option for those who cannot manage the automatic procedure. In any case, the automatic application should be improved to process the information related to patients’ year of birth more effectively. For the case of elderly people, the phone call should be routed to an assistant. This assistant should also be available for those who, eventually, may have trouble while booking.

I hope you will consider my proposal favourably.

Yours faithfully,