"Unsatisfactory discharge from hospital."

Dear Concerned Niece

I am really sorry to read about your aunt's experience in preparation for and following discharge from Box Hill Hospital. However, I am pleased to note your satisfaction with regard to the care and compassion your aunt received in the Emergency Department. I will certainly pass your feedback on to the staff and the local management team too.

However, I can see that there were issues with regard to preparation for discharge including general communication within the hospital, communication with the nursing home and also, with regard to the personal details we held for your aunt. I am truly sorry that we have let you and your aunt down on this occasion.

I would like to follow this up for you and seek some answers as well as understanding what we can do to prevent a recurrence. In order for me to do this, I would really appreciate you advising me confidentially of your aunt's name, her ward whilst at Box Hill Hospital and date of discharge so that I can correctly identify her records and review the detail. You can be reassured that this will be carried out for the purposes of taking corrective action only and learning about what we can do better. If you are happy to do this, you can email me privately at alan.lilly@easternhealth.org.au and I will follow-up immediately. Whatever you decide, I will fully respect your decision.

In the event that I do not hear from you, I will still follow-up but of course, it will be in a more general manner. Once again, I am sorry that your lasting impression of our health service is less than positive and I hope that I can correct this for you.

In the meantime, I look forward to hearing from you and thank you for sharing your story on Patient Opinion.

Kind regards, Alan Lilly.

Dear Concerned niece

Firstly, thank you for sending additional information as requested in my earlier response to your story. This has indeed most helpful and I am pleased to say that a review has been undertaken by the Box Hill Hospital Chief -Clinical & Site Operations, Mr Martin Smith.

As a result of your feedback, we have identified that whilst there were hand written updates with regard to your aunt's details, the Patient Master Index (PMI) had not been updated and hence the problems you encountered at the time of discharge. Therefore, the Director of Information Services will now be writing to all Ward Clerks and Admitting Clerical Staff to reinforce the requirement to verify and update the details on the PMI at the time of the patient's admission. This notification will also be distributed across the organisation to Directors and Departmental Managers to maximise the learning in this regard.

I can also confirm that our Eastern Health Director of General Medicine, Dr Evan Newnham, has also spoken to the Doctor involved in this matter. Through this, we did in fact identify that the Doctor had tried to call the nursing home on a number of occasions without success but had left a message to return her call on her own private mobile phone. Whilst this was not immediately apparent, it is most pleasing to note her commitment in this regard.

The Nurse Manager of the ward concerned has been most apologetic for the inconvenience experienced by you, your aunt and your family and is most sorry for this series of events. In addition, Martin Smith has personally apologised for these events and has confirmed his commitment to improvements as we have outlined above.

I do hope that you can see that we have taken your feedback on board and that we have truly learned form your less than desirable experience.

Again, on behalf of Eastern Health, I am sorry that you experienced our Health Service in this way but you can be reassured that we have learned from this and will do better next time.

If you would like to discuss this further, please do not hesitate to let me know.

Kind regards and thank you, Alan Lilly