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Care Opinion

Long wait for prescription

Posted By LetItSnow

"Long wait for prescription"

About: Western Health & Social Care Trust / Urgent Care

(as a service user),

I called the Western Urgent Care receptionist on Sunday evening and gave my details, the issue and requested the appropriate medication I required. I was advised it could take up to 5 hours to receive a call back. On Monday morning I had a missed call from a private number (over 12 hours after my initial call). I rang the receptionist shortly after this to check if someone had tried to get in touch. I was advised that because I had missed the call it had been closed and that I would have to start again from scratch (I wonder if my original call could have been reopened so that I would not have had to go to the bottom of the list or if this is something that could be changed going forward?).

The receptionist logged a new call and I gave the same details as before. I was told it could take up to 5 hours to receive a call back. I received a call 8 hours later from a Triage Nurse who advised me to go to A&E, Altnagelvin. I advised her that I only required medication (as I have had this issue before) and that this was not something that required a trip to A&E. I was then told I would be contacted by a Clinician which could take up to 5 hours.

I received a call 17 hours later on Tuesday to say that I had been left a prescription in the Western Urgent Care Limavady centre which is twice the distance away from my nearest centre in Altnagelvin (I wonder if prescriptions could be picked up from your nearest centre if possible or if this is something that could be changed going forward?). Over 40 hours later and I finally have my medication.

I would like to thank John in the Western Urgent Care Limavady centre who kindly gave me directions on where to pick up my prescription and advised which chemists were open. If you could pass on my gratitude to him.

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Responses

Response from General Manager western urgent care, Western Urgent Care, Western Health & Social Care Trust 2 years ago
We have made a change
Western Health & Social Care Trust

Submitted on 06/01/2022 at 18:55
Published on Care Opinion on 07/01/2022 at 09:12

This response was provided by the General Manager of Western Urgent Care, which is the service commissioned to provide GP Out of Hours service across the Western area. Whilst the service will operate from a number of Trust buildings it is a separate service and not part of Western Health and Social Care Trust.

We are sorry that you had a long wait for your requested medication. We are always disappointed when Patients do not get the level of service which they deserve and which we strive to achieve. You contacted the service over the very busy Christmas Bank Holiday weekend. This was a particularly busy period for the service and for all Out of Hours Providers in the North, with unprecedented levels of calls. As an Urgent Care service we must prioritise those Patients who are clinically urgent and that will include young children, the elderly and vulnerable, palliative and mental health Patients. This may mean that we have long delays in calling back any Patients who are routine. At present, and certainly over the weekend in question we received a high volume of calls from clinically urgent Patients and many complaining about symptoms of Covid.

We would always attempt to make at least two calls to someone in an effort to triage their call. Depending upon their situation we may make more attempts but at some point in order to manage the workload that we have then we need to close the call if we do not get a response. All repeat calls need to be re-triaged and any calls will be added to the queue. We are unable to open a call that has already been closed.

The vast majority of our calls are triaged by highly skilled and very experienced Nurse Advisors. They are unable to issue prescriptions or medications as it is not within their role. They need to defer any requests for medication to be approved by a prescribing Clinician such as a GP or an Advanced Nurse Practitioner. These Clinicians were very busy seeing clinically urgent Patients face-to-face within the bases, dealing with Covid symptomatic Patients and undertaking home visits that they unfortunately had limited time to arrange any prescriptions.

On occasions when one base may be quieter than another we will arrange for the prescribing Clinicians in a base to provide any prescriptions that are needed for Patients waiting at other locations. We will arrange for our Drivers to transfer the prescriptions between the bases, if they are open, so that they can be collected by Patients. We must apologise that you were asked to collect your prescription at the Limavady base if that was not one of the open bases closest to you that. We will certainly look into this to ensure that this does not occur again.

Thank you for taking the time to acknowledge the assistance that the Driver in the Limavady base offered to you. We will pass on your thanks and acknowledgement to him.

We hope that this goes some way to explain the reason for the delay in you receiving the medication that you requested and thank you for flagging the issue about collecting your prescription.

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