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"Difficulties in contacting clinic"

About: Gartnavel General Hospital / Diabetes Clinic/Centre

(as a service user),

I have Type 1 diabetes and attend the clinic at Gartnaval General Hospital in Glasgow.  The clinic has been functioning on a "remote" basis during the pandemic. I recently had an issue regarding the ordering of insulin pump supplies - the Health Board responsible for my funding started to reject invoices from the pump company so they were unable to provide infusion sets etc., leaving me in danger of running out of pump supplies.  

This seems to have been a simple administrative error and should have been easy to sort.  My problem was that it was nearly impossible to contact my clinic.  NHS Scotland appears to have changed all their email addresses without informing patients of the new contact details - emails sent to the old addresses were rejected.  "Non Urgent" telephone calls to the clinic are being diverted to voicemail and I did not receive the promised response within 24 h.  

It was only because I know another patient with contacts in the MCN that I was able to obtain an email address to contact at the clinic.  Hopefully, the difficulty with ordering pump supplies is being resolved.  

I am well aware of the difficulties that the pandemic has presented to all aspects of the NHS.  Nevertheless it is essential where clinics are not functioning on a face to face basis that patients be provided with support and this includes providing them with the appropriate  email contacts, phone numbers etc.   This does not seem to be the case.   

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Responses

Response from Nicole McInally, Patient Experience and Public Involvement Project Manager, PEPI, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde 3 years ago
Nicole McInally
Patient Experience and Public Involvement Project Manager, PEPI,
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde
Submitted on 08/04/2021 at 15:47
Published on Care Opinion at 15:47


picture of Nicole McInally

Dear Joelm335

Thank you for getting in touch.

I am sorry to hear about the issues you have encountered regarding you insulin pump supplies and being unable to contact the Diabetes Clinic. As you have mentioned there have been a number of changes to the clinic as a result of the Pandemic, but it is still important that patients are still able to contact the Clinics.

For other people reading your story, the email addresses for the Gartnavel Clinic is ggc.northwestglasgowdiabeteshub@nhs.scot and the contact telephone number is: 0141 211 3136.

I will share your post with the Senior Management Team responsible for the Diabetes Service and confirm that patients have been made aware of the changes to the Service.

Kind Regards

Nicole

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