"Appalling staff attitudes and poor internal..."

My 75 year old father was referred to the Eastman Dental Hospital for dental treatment for a cracked molar tooth on medical grounds. i.e. his adverse reaction to anaesthetics during the course of recent heart surgery operations. We wasted some two months in attempting to obtain a first appointment at Eastman. We found the Patient Bookings Manager to be arrogant and unhelpful when we complained about the prolonged delay. The General Manager failed to return telephone messages and emails requesting an update on my father's admission and then casually went off on annual leave. We were constantly told that key supervisory staff were at "meetings" and any time we tried to get through to these key individuals, you always got their answering machine. My father was subsequently refused dental treatment on irrational grounds and it seems that he was unlawfully victimized by hospital internal staff for making a complaint. When we complained to the University College London Complaints Department, an even more pertinent Complaints Coordinator told us that he was "too busy" to discuss our complaint. It is clear that there are far better places to receive dental treatment within the NHS than at Eastman Dental Hospital. We have never met the dental consultants themselves at Eastman so cannot comment upon this, however, our deeply disturbing experiences at these early stages was enough to get us to look elsewhere for dental treatment for a vulnerable pensioner. Heaven knows how the elderly and frail would ever cope with Eastman Dental Hospital on their own. A big thumbs down from our family and certainly not a "world class" dental hospital in any sense of the word when it comes to staff attitudes towards patients.