My 86 year old Mother has been given an appointment to attend for her flu vaccination to a large venue out of town. There is not information about how close parking is to the venue or how far she might have to walk within the venue.
I have phoned the GP to try and arrange for her to have a home visit as this appears to be the only recourse in this situation.
I appreciate that this is a mass vaccination programme, but who thought it was a good idea to arrange appointments for the elderly and disabled at out of town venues? Many elderly people do not have relatives to take them and may also not have anyone to advocate for them. I am perfectly willing to take her, but I have grave reservations about her ability walk within the venue.
This has undoubtedly been intended to save work for the surgeries, but it seems it will likely increase their workload to arrange home visits. A ludicrous situation that has been ill conceived. Not everyone falls into the category of being able to be herded into a mass programme.
I have had to come here to vent, because I have been told that NHS inform are not dealing with any feedback or complaints other than those related to Covid 19! This situation requires urgent review. The surgeries managed to provide Covid vaccinations for patients over the age of 80. Obviously, it required some out of the box thinking and logistics, but was successfully achieved. However, I suspect the cost of that programme may be an issue. Maybe instead of paying exorbitant rates to retired GPs, Dentists, Opthalmologists (most of whom will never have given a vaccination before in their lives), whilst I might add, not even paying overtime rates to the nursing staff who carried out most of the vaccinations in the surgeries, it might be more achievable!
Please urgently review this situation.
"Flu vaccination programme"
About: NHS Lothian NHS Lothian Edinburgh EH16 4SA
Posted by Clachtoll (as ),
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