A PATIENT could have been forgiven for thinking he was being April fooled when a letter arrived saying his hospital appointment had been changed - by five minutes!

The man, of Whinney Lane, Langho, received the notice to tell him his appointment at Blackburn Royal Infirmary's out-patients department today had been moved from 10.20am to 10.15am.

East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust has blamed a clerical error but the patient, who did not want to be named, said: "I thought bureaucrats weren't supposed to have a sense of humour.

"It will be interesting to see if I get seen at that time, as people usually complain they are kept waiting to see their doctor.

"As a matter of courtesy I always arrive five or 10 minutes early for my appointments so it would not have been a problem.

"There is no need to send a letter out just because they are changing the appointment time by five minutes. The time was underlined and somebody had also written on the letter 'please note change of time' but I still had to do a double-take and read it twice.

"I wonder how much it must be costing them to send letters out to people and the confusion it must be causing."

But a spokesman for the trust, said: "We do try to spread our appointments out to benefit our patients so we send letters to patients informing them if we move their appointment. These are usually only sent out if the appointment is moved by ten minutes or more.

"In this case it would appear that a clerical error has resulted in a letter being sent to the patient and we apologise for any inconvenience caused."

Mollie Manthorpe, chairman of East Lancashire Hospitals' patients and public involvement forum, said: "I can see how this could have been confusing but the forum does accept that this is a one-off mistake. However we will keep an eye on this to see if it happens again and if it is causing any problems for patients."