Sir - Your coverage of Oxfordshire health issues is consistently excellent. In recent weeks, you have carried articles about elective stretch and patient choice.

In early February, I received a letter from the grandly styled Elective Access Systems Manager in the Elective Access Centre of the Elective Access Department (no less) of the ORH. The address given was still the Radcliffe Infirmary. Enclosed was a questionnaire from pollsters Ipsos MORI with three questions about patient choice. The third question asked if I had received a Patient Choice booklet from my GP. I hadn't. The next time I saw my GP, I wryly asked him about this (as we had discussed the realities of patient choice). He was perplexed, but called a few days later to explain that the entire practice, which has some 20,000 patients and ten partners, had only received 15 brochures.

I called the system manager several times, before calling the switchboard, only to learn that he had moved jobs. I was then given the name of the Elective Access Performance Improvement Manager (I promise that I am not making this up!) and left a message asking her to call me back. That was nearly two weeks ago, and I have had no reply.

What's the betting that the desperately low outreach index of the surgery in question will feature in some performance improvement target as a justification for further recourse to external consultants to enhance communications?

Michael Hocken, Abingdon