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Outpatient appointments

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"Outpatient appointments"

About: Queen Victoria Hospital (East Grinstead)

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Appointment times are never adhered to. Never come across this problem so badly as in Plastic Surgery. I find it difficult to understand how such delays can happen except perhaps that too many appointments are made for each clinic. This certainly was the case last Tuesday when the surgeon was having an ad hoc clinic to replace the once in September that we showed up for but it should have been cancelled as he wasn't there. Of course we didn't find out until we'd been waiting about 2 hours! Apparently the appointments people put other people in the ad hoc clinic that had not been at the September clinic. I waited 1.5 hours to be seen. However, as I said, this appears to be standard for Plastic Surgery appointments. Indeed appointments at the Conquest outreach clinic also ran approximately 1.5 hours late so maybe it's just that plastic surgeons can't keep time?

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Responses

Response from Nicolle Ferguson, Patient Experience Manager, Queen Victoria Hospital NHS Foundation Trust 10 years ago
Nicolle Ferguson
Patient Experience Manager,
Queen Victoria Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

Submitted on 08/11/2013 at 10:47
Published on Care Opinion at 12:28

picture of Nicolle Ferguson

Dear Fed Up,

I am sorry to learn that you were dissatisfied when accessing this service recently and wish to apologise for the fact that your experience was poor. Every effort is made during our plastic surgery clinics to see patients as expeditiously as possible. The nature of the surgical conditions that we treat, which sometimes require quite prolonged follow up appointments, can sometimes create delays which we aim to minimise. At the same time we aim to give every patient the individual attention their condition deserves. However on this particular occasion there were extra patients added onto this clinic which I wish to assure you is not standard practice.

As an organisation we recognise that some of the clinics do not run to time and regularly undertake full patient pathway reviews as we want to ensure that in future patients coming to the clinic have a much better experience and do not encounter the type of delays that you did recently. I hope that any future attendances will be more positive.

Kind regards,

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Response from Queen Victoria Hospital (East Grinstead) 10 years ago
Queen Victoria Hospital (East Grinstead)

Submitted on 08/11/2013 at 10:49
Published on nhs.uk on 09/11/2013 at 03:00

Dear Fed Up, I am sorry to learn that you were dissatisfied when accessing this service recently and wish to apologise for the fact that your experience was poor. Every effort is made during our plastic surgery clinics to see patients as expeditiously as possible. The nature of the surgical conditions that we treat, which sometimes require quite prolonged follow up appointments, can sometimes create delays which we aim to minimise. At the same time we aim to give every patient the individual attention their condition deserves. However on this particular occasion there were extra patients added onto this clinic which I wish to assure you is not standard practice. As an organisation we recognise that some of the clinics do not run to time and regularly undertake full patient pathway reviews as we want to ensure that in future patients coming to the clinic have a much better experience and do not encounter the type of delays that you did recently. I hope that any future attendances will be more positive. Kind regards, Nicolle Tadman - Patient Experience Manager

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