Join the Ipswich Hospital Patient Portal
See your appointment letters and information online
Ipswich Hospital patients over 18 are being invited to join our Patient Portal. The service launches on 19 November. You will be sent a text message when your next appointment is booked.
The Patient Portal will show your appointment letters and information about appointments online. Signing up is a short and secure sign-up process. You can even choose to go paperless and switch off postal appointment letters.
The message will invite you to join our Patient Portal by clicking a link from your phone or other device. The link is specific to you and linked to your individual NHS number.
Why join the Patient Portal?
We know keeping on top of appointments can be difficult. We have designed the Patient Portal to:
- Give you more control by providing access to information about your appointments
- Reduce the chance of lost letters and confusion about appointment dates and times
- Show information online anytime anywhere wherever you are
- Offer you a choice of ways to receive information from the hospital.
The Patient Portal will not show information about appointments you have had in the past.
There are some areas that are not yet using the Patient Portal but we expect all areas to be available soon.
No invitation?
Please make sure that we have a mobile phone number for you on our system. You can speak to a member of our clinic staff about this.
Future developments
We plan to develop the Patient Portal. You will see new features added over time such as:
- changing your details
- requesting changes to appointments
- communication with our doctors, nurses and therapists.
The Patient Portal will launch for patients at Colchester Hospital in early 2020.
Technical problems?
If you’re having difficulty signing up for the Patient Portal, please email us on patient.portal@esneft.nhs.uk and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
Frequently asked questions
Patients can see their appointment letters as a pdf file, and details of their appointment location, date and time. They can also choose to turn off paper appointment letters so they don’t receive them through the post.
Currently the Patient Portal is only for users aged 18 and over. We will be developing a way for under 18s to use it in such a way that supports 16 and 17 year old who are transitioning to adult services, as well as other children, whose parents will need to use it by proxy.
No, this is a patient’s choice, all patients over 18 years old and who have a mobile number on our system, will be invited with the exception of those that have opted out of receiving text messages from the Trust.
If you no longer wish to receive invitation text messages, you can reply STOP to them.
Nearly all outpatient appointments letters will be, the exception being three to four specialities where letters will continue to be sent as they are now. We are working with these specialities to bring them on board.
Inpatient letters and copies of clinical letters that have been sent to primary care providers will also not be included at this stage.
Patients can only access their information on their account by using the one off code sent to their mobile phone at the log in stage. Using the same technology that high street banks have to protect your information.
No. Each patient will need a separate email address. This is to support patient confidentiality.