"Hospital appointments in Ayrshire and Arran"

I was advised by my GP that I needed to have an ultrasound carried out as part of ongoing investigations prior to undergoing an operation for another problem. Due to delay in operation, GP advised that I could ask to be put onto hospital appointment cancellation list as I could attend at very short notice. I contacted Crosshouse Hospital to request that I be added to their short notice cancellation list and was advised their waiting time was around 3 weeks for routine appointments but they handn't recieved my referral yet. I then phoned Ayr Hospital to find that it had been sent there. Not a problem as I live central to both. However I was advised that their waiting time was 9 weeks for a routine appointment but I would be added to their list for short notice cancellations. All very good you might think and so did I.

That was until I phoned Ayr Hospital 2 weeks later to reschedule an appointment for my mother who had also (coincidentally) been referred for an ultrasound by her GP. Once I had rescheduled this appointment from first thing in morning and given one later same afternoon, which I thought it was marvellous, I then mentioned my own appointment in the hope of being offered the cancellation or to check on my progress up their cancellation list.

I was shocked to be told that I couldn't be offered a cancellation appointment because there was no such list. And, that the next person on the routine list for appointing who had already been waiting for 9 weeks would be offered the next available appointment - (which would then have been within the next 2 days).

My first issue with all of this is why can 2 hospitals within the same healthboard area have such different lengths of time to wait - is it a postcoDe lottery?

My second issue is why are patients being led to believe that not attending for their appointments is causing such a big problem for waiting times - if hospitals don't have cancellation lists?