"This hospital is on it's knees. Not fit for..."

I am patient of the facial pain department and my experience has been utterly horrendous. It is impossible to contact their reception. Literally, I have called every day every hour for weeks on end and nobody ever picks up. I have tried all the different numbers and I have left dozens of messages asking someone to call me back and nobody ever does except on one occasion and that was only because I wrote a complaint to my consultant about this! And this has been going on for ages. It's not a recent occurrence. How can this be? How can this problem STILL NOT BE RESOLVED? There are countless other reviews from patients who have identified the exact same issue and yet the problem still persists! The consultants involved in my care were abysmal and completely useless. They failed me in nearly every conceivable way from shoddy investigations, suspect diagnosis, evading questions, not listening, purposively failing to take into account facts that didn't fit their model, and not writing patient care letters as required. And to top it all off, the complaints team are a joke as well. I wrote a comprehensive formal complaint letter about my experience and the response? A half hearted letter filled with laughable attempts to deflect blame and protect themselves. They are not interested in rectifying mistakes or improving. They just want to protect themselves against being sued. Not only that, the complaints team ignored about half of my points. No response to them whatsoever. It's very demoralising to say the least.

I have reported them to the CQC and I will be taking my grievances to the parliamentary and health service ombudsmen. The dreadful levels of service cannot continue. The public are being let down badly by institutions like the Eastman Hospital. Something has been done and I hope it happens soon. If you are a patient here then just be careful because they could do more harm than good. I have been waiting for months for a treatment appointment which is long overdue, but I am going to cancel and go private because I don’t trust my treatment team to do the job properly or provide adequate aftercare especially if something goes wrong. Imagine if I got an infection…I wouldn’t be able to contact them for help because nobody ever answers the phones!!!!