Inaccurate clinic letter

Hello ansteynomad 

Cracking hospital, not only can they move lesions, misinterpret appointments, they can move you from incurable to curable. 

The NHS working miracles everyday!  You are on a roll .

Best wishes - Brian. .

Hi Ansteynomad, I feel your frustration! I know you have had lots of problems with this particular hospital Trust. Is it possible to move to another Trust?

I think you have been keeping a complete diary of events? I would suggest sending the details to the Care Quality Commission - if not just for your own benefit but to help prevent this happening for patients following you.

best wishes

Further to this I would also submit a Subject Access request to get copies of your medical information just to check that they haven't mixed up your records at some point with someone elses.

Sounds a bit familiar ansteynomad . I’ve had a letter with the wrong name on it, appointments which didn’t match what was on their screen when I arrived and an appointment to discuss the MRI results before the MRI had actually happened. I took one letter to the ward in a different hospital with a pre-admission appointment which didn’t feel right, to be met with blank faces and told I wasn’t on their list…! That was probably 50% of the letters I had received up to transfer to oncology. The clinical staff have always been wonderful, some of the admin less so. You do have to be a bit proactive at times…

On Monday I waited all day for my oncology 3 monthly phone call.  At 4pm I rang and was told the clinic had been cancelled and they had forgotten to tell me.  I was put onto the Tuesday list and duly called at the correct time.  I had a bit of a moan and explained that anxiety and stress levels do go up. I was told that the admin person was normally very good, so I can accept that it was probably a one off and everyone makes mistakes.  In my view the medics and nursing staff seem to be really good but the system is badly let down by admin inefficiency and incompetence.  Complaining to PALS seems a good route, but I do worry about the cost of requesting a subject access report.  I have a sneaky feeling that the more requests that are made, the larger the admin function will grow and by contrast funds will be cut from frontline services.  I am not suggesting that we don't make subject access requests when justified, but over using the system has its cost.

We had a more positive appointment this time, with a young resident doctor. The T3a apparently relates to the primary tumour and it is staged as that even though the bone, lymph and lung involvement technically makes it Stage 4. I'm still not convinced that's right. Urology were quite open that he was Stage 4 with no curative intent. 

The movement of the iliac lesion from left to right was an error in the radiologist's report, which was perpetuated by the specialist nurse, who was thankfully and nowhere to be seen on this occasion.

Inevitably, however, something did not go to plan. Last week's appointment had been arranged after 11 weeks rather than 12 so that we were not in a position where he was running out of meds on the day of the appointment. It's a good job he wasn't, because there was no one available to sign his prescription off and one of us will have to go back at some point in the next few days to collect his meds.

You are entirely correct, but there is an angle that people often don’t think about.

In my past life I was a “frontline service that wasn’t axed”.

What everyone failed to mention was that the work that the admin people had done WASN’T axed - so I was doing that as well as being a valued member of the frontline staff.

Such fun.

Hi ansteynomad , just picking up on your point about getting repeat medication from hospital, can’t your GP surgery organise repeats?  Anyway, glad you had a more positive meeting.

Steve (mstev2 , I am a massive fan of the NHS (having spent my first 20 years working in it) but sadly, politicians have meddled and wasted funds throughout its history.  

Abiraterone is something like £3K a month, so there's no way the surgery would have that on their budget!