"A Curates Egg ... Providing a Poor Service"

On balance ... Avoid, avoid avoid !!! Demand a referral to the appropriate regional center which specialises in your condition, or be prepared to suffer inordinate delays whilst being passed from pillar to post. Increasingly it seems to provide a poor service for poor people, treating patients like the objects in the grammar of medicine.

A bit like the proverbial curates egg, parts are good and match the mission statement, as for the system as a whole ... well, as clichés about Walsall indicate, a scale needs to be extended downward to accommodate the level of performance shown by the system as a whole.

Individuals working within the Hospital system are frequently caring, committed and willing to go that extra mile, and then a bit more to provide care and to treat patients with compassion and consideration. As for the system as a whole it seems unfit for purpose and, despite the heroic extra efforts put in by many of those working within the system, makes a mockery of its vague and meaningless Mission Statement.

Inordinate delays to diagnosis and treatment seem to be produced by an incredibly inefficient system to exchange data and informations between the various sub-systems. Inefficient sub-systems subvert and cancel out the efforts of more caring and efficient areas to provide an adequate patient experience and to provide timely treatment.

The Hospital and its associated Trust appear to show signs of systemic failure. Information fails to circulate in a timely manner and horrific delays to treatment occur when a functioning system like vascular surgery has to interact with chaotic systems like those of Urology. This is compounded by the inability of the Manor Hospitals information systems to communicate with those of the regional centers of excellence where matters like vascular and cardiac surgery are performed, resulting in inordinate delays to treatment even when pushed by a consultant to consultant referral.

Many individual sub-systems function well with a caring and committed staff who try very hard to deliver a good standard of care, combined with compassion and respect for a patients dignity. For others this is merely a distant aspiration. My recent experience of Cardiology has been catastrophic. Inordinate delays for appointments, long delays for diagnostic tests and arriving being passed from pillar to post without the supporting data and then after a significant delay being passed back from post to pillar do not inspire confidence in the ability of the system to deliver timely and appropriate care.

After waiting over 18 weeks I have not even had an offer of treatment.

Avoid, avoid avoid ... demand a referral to the regional center where the appropriate operations are carried out ... do not allow your GP to fob you off with a referral to the Manor unless that is where any surgical procedure would take place.

Increasingly this Trust is reduced to providing a poor service to poor people.