"Appointment system at Tameside Hospital"

This story has been posted by Healthwatch Tameside on behalf of a member of the public who asked not to have their name published. They said…

This lady, who is over 80 years old, had a colonoscopy and is waiting for results. She was told an appointment would be sent. Last week she received a letter saying she had missed her appointment so would have to start the process again. She did not receive the original appointment letter so phoned to query when exactly it was sent. She was told there had been an oversight. The letter had not been sent. She was offered an appointment in two months’ time. In the meantime, she is very anxious about the results of her procedure and has no faith in the appointment system (which she was told was not working because it was now centralised).

Since then she and her family have heard of several other patients to whom the same “oversight” applied! There were four in the last week!