“Your call is important to us…” Really?

Not being a passive patient, and in the light of a discharge letter that indicated a clinic review 2 weeks after discharge, and having heard nothing, I thought it might be worth ringing the Referral and Booking Service to see if there was anything in the system for me. At 1630 I got the first ‘busy message’ – “Our call is important to us…please hold and we will answer shortly”. This was repeated at roughly 20 second intervals for the next 23 minutes before it was answered by a very helpful man who told me that there was no record of any appointment or request! Only the appointment for 28th June that was ‘postponed’ in the light of me having surgery 2 days later.

Helpfully he gave me the endocrinology consultant’s secretary’s number and transferred me – no response whatsoever.

So now I find that not only was the discharge letter not received by my GP (I cannot say whether it was sent, only that 10 days later he had not received it) but that also the follow-up arrangements stated in the letter appear not to have been acted upon either. Whoops is hardly strong enough.

Coincidentally I receive an email from the Patient Experience team in response to my last blog and take that opportunity to discuss the situation with them. This results in two actions – firstly a call from the Patient Advice and Liaison service who volunteer to chase my urgent concern about the missing endocrine clinic appointment and secondly an offer to review what has happened with the Head of Nursing for Neurology (?). Both of these are welcome and I reserve the right to make a formal complaint in due course – I understand that this will trigger a detailed review of what happened (or not) when and a detailed formal response.

My concern all along has been to improve processes, not just to complain, although I am beginning to wonder if a formal complaint might add to the weight of improvement effort already underway. I don’t in any way wish to devalue those efforts, for they do seem to be taking my concerns seriously, but maybe just maybe a formal detailed investigation might add something. I will wait to see.