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Care Opinion

Long delay in cardiac outpatients dept

Posted By EvoTAM

"Long delay in cardiac outpatients dept"

About: Queen Elizabeth Hospital / Cardiology

(as a carer),

We attended Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham for a pre-arranged appointment to review recent exercise tolerance tests. The experience was less than pleasant due an acute over booking of 30 patients.

What makes it worse is that no one waiting to see the Dr was advised that there would be severe delays, bearing in mind this was a cardiac unit, the added stress was not beneficial.

What should they have done? Well, simply follow the guidelines set in other hospitals: keep the patient informed after 20 mins post appointment time, not overbook hard-pressed Drs, and finally take responsibilty and not "pass the buck" by not taking ownership where a complaint is made.

This is not a "whingeing " complaint. My wife and daughter are heath care professionals who are involved in outpatient clinics. In their opinion the QE staff failed quite miserably, myself as a non-healthcare professional just found the 2 hr wait most inconvenient and this in turn dealyed the long journey home.

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Responses

Response from University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust 12 years ago
University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust

Submitted on 27/10/2011 at 13:48
Published on Care Opinion at 14:02

Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback on your experience when you visited the Cardiology Outpatients Department at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham.

We are very sorry to hear that you experienced such a long delay in the clinic and that we did not communicate with you properly whilst you were waiting to be seen. This is certainly not the type of experience we would want anyone to have whilst attending our hospital. We strive to provide the highest standard of care possible and we are very sorry that we have not achieved this on this occasion.

Your comments have been forwarded to the senior managers responsible for this department and we will shortly be posting a more detailed response to the issues you have raised.

We welcome all feedback and would like to assure you that all comments are taken seriously and acted upon as part of our ongoing commitment to improving patient experience.

Response from University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust 12 years ago
We have made a change
University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust

Submitted on 07/11/2011 at 12:20
Published on Care Opinion at 12:57

Thank you for your patience in waiting for a more detailed response to your comments. Your comments have been shared with the senior managers responsible for the Cardiology Clinic you visited and they have responded to say:

We are aware that we have had some delays in these clinics due to overbooking of patients and we are very sorry for the inconvenience this has caused to some of our patients. Whilst Outpatient Department staff are aware of the importance of communicating with patients and keeping them informed of delays this clearly didn’t happen on the day you visited. Staff will be further reminded to do this to ensure that future patients have a better experience.

In addition to this we are currently in the process of reviewing all the Cardiology clinics and the times that appointments are booked for. Some new guidelines have been introduced to one of the clinics to improve the experience of patients, when this is reviewed we will hopefully be able to implement changes across the whole of the speciality.

We would like to thank you again for sharing details of your experience with us, if you visit the department again in the future we would very much hope that you have a more positive experience.

If you would like to discuss your comments or our response in more detail please contact our Patient Advice and Liaison Service who will be pleased to assist you. You can contact them by phone 0121 371 3280, by email PALS@uhb.nhs.uk, via the hospital website http://www.uhb.nhs.uk/pals.htm or in person by dropping in between 10am-4pm (Mon-Fri) to the PALS office located to the left of the Information desk inside the Main Entrance.

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