Patient Initiated Follow Up (PIFU)

Putting you in control of your follow-up care

Information for patients

At the moment, regular follow up appointments are arranged by the hospital within a specific timeframe, for example every six months or every year.  Some patients find these regular visits useful and reassuring.  For others, it can be frustrating or stressful coming to hospital if they don’t feel they need to.

Alder Hey has started using Patient Initiated Follow Up (PIFU) for appropriate patients. On PIFU,  you can arrange follow up appointments with your hospital care team when you feel you need them, or if your symptoms get worse.  This puts you in control of your follow up appointments and gives you access to support and guidance when you need it.

Why we’re introducing this new type of follow up

This type of follow up is led by the patient and their family and offers a number of benefits:

• You have more control over your appointments and when you need them
• Appointments are made based on your individual needs
• For many people it will mean they don’t need to come to hospital as often meaning less time off school and less travelling
• With fewer patients coming in when they don’t need to we can make appointments available more quickly for those who do
• We can also reduce our carbon footprint by lowering the number of patients travelling to the hospital unnecessarily

What do I need to do?

If you are placed on a Patient Initiated Follow Up plan this should be discussed with you in clinic and your clinic letter will contains details of which symptoms to look out for and how to make contact with the service if you feel you need to be seen again.

Patient initiated follow up won’t be suitable for every patient but if your hospital care team think they could be right for you they will discuss this with you.

If you experience any symptoms not listed on your letter you should contact 111 for advice.

Services now live with Patient Initiated Follow-up:  

• Orthotics
• Fracture
• ENT
• Cardiology
• Endocrine
• Gen Paeds
• Spinal
• Orthopaedics
• Plastics – Early Bird
• Rheumatology
• Gynaecology
• Ambulatory
• Dermatology
• Paediatric Surgery
• Paediatric Urology
• Neurosurgery