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Missed referral, never pick up the phone

Posted By outraged and pregnant

"Missed referral, never pick up the phone"

About: The Royal London Hospital / Maternity

(as the patient),

I live near the Royal London hospital so when I got pregnant, I asked my GP for a referral to the Royal London hospital's antenatal care. Weeks go by and I hear nothing from the hospital. I rang and rang but no one ever picked up. Finally, at 11.5 weeks pregnant, I took half a day off work and went to the hospital to speak to the receptionist, only to find out that they never picked up on my referral at all. And they were unable to offer me a first ultrasound scan until my 16th week (apparently it is absolutely impossible to arrange an emergency appointment despite messing up the referral), which means I will have missed the window for the first anomaly test.

I particularly loved the receptionist's attitude: if anything feels wrong, just go to A&E!

Absolutely outrageous.

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Responses

Response from Faith Kapora, Corporate PALS Lead, Barts Health NHS Trust 5 years ago
Faith Kapora
Corporate PALS Lead,
Barts Health NHS Trust

Submitted on 22/01/2019 at 13:58
Published on Care Opinion at 14:34

We are deeply sorry to hear of the problems you have experienced arranging your antenatal care, and would welcome you to contact us directly to WomensGovernanceRLH@bartshealth.nhs.uk, or via telephone on 0203 594 2407, and we will do our best to resolve the matter as quickly as possible. We appreciate the feedback and will do our best to prevent reoccurrence. Your comments have been brought to the attention of the head of midwifery, matrons responsible for the area, antenatal clinic lead midwife and our general manager.

Our antenatal clinic receives a very high volume of telephone calls every day, and we have started a Quality Improvement programme aimed at minimising delays and improving phone access, to meet the expectations the families we care for, have of us. We work closely with our local GPs to embed new electronic referral system and learning from any issues that may present.’

Kind regards

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