"poor poor service"

Thank you, Andy, for posting your feedback about your experience of our hospital. We aim always to offer our patients the highest standards of care and we would like to apologise if we fell short of those standards on this occasion. It is not usual to find nobody available at reception to book patients in for their appointments. We have looked into our staffing levels around the time of your visit and it looks like our receptionist was taken sick and so, unfortunately, was her replacement. While we were in the process of finding someone else to cover reception duties, some patients did experience unacceptable waiting times, and for this we must apologise. It is not our practice to give all our outpatients the same appointment slot: there are usually three people booked per appointment as there are three doctors in attendance. In addition, a second orthopaedic clinic is managed within the same vicinity and again more than one patient can be given an appointment at the same time as there is more than one clinician supporting the clinic. Unfortunately matters out of our control, such as sickness absence, do occasionally mean longer than usual waiting times.