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"Accessing departments"

About: Maroondah Hospital

(as the patient),

After a horrible experience in Day Surgery I rang the Patient feedback area and was informed (by the answering machine) that I should speak with the manager of the department concerned. For the next 9 working days I spent up to 2 hours a day trying to contact what began to seem like a mythical creature. 

At one point I was put through to a child. She said her mum was busy and hung up on me when she didn't seem to know what else to do.

Contacting Eastern Health was rarely a stressful experience until one area became responsible for all EH calls.

Those I have spoken to recently do not seem to understand anything at all about hospital structure or who to speak to when making a complaint. I am sure this would not be the only area receiving less calls and frustrating members of the public.

As I had been treated extremely poorly in Day Surgery, my stress increased every day until I managed to speak to someone at last, at the Patient feedback area.

Please do some training with your phone staff.

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Responses

Response from David Plunkett, Chief Executive, Eastern Health 6 years ago
We are preparing to make a change
David Plunkett
Chief Executive,
Eastern Health
Submitted on 6/09/2017 at 1:48 PM
Published on Care Opinion at 2:16 PM


picture of David Plunkett

Dear Kazzabo

I would like to apologise for your experience in trying to contact various services within Eastern Health, especially when you were trying to provide us feedback on your recent experience in Day Surgery at Maroondah Hospital.

Thank you for your tenacity and I would also like to thank you for taking the time to provide your feedback on Patient Opinion.

It is clear from your feedback, improvements are needed and I will ensure we review our current systems and processes. I can assure you, notwithstanding your difficulties, receiving feedback such as yours is very important to me and the Executive team at Eastern Health.

I will follow up with the staff in the Centre for Patient Experience regarding your feedback regarding your care in Day Surgery as well.

Thank you again and kind regards

David

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Response from David Plunkett, Chief Executive, Eastern Health 5 years ago
We have made a change
David Plunkett
Chief Executive,
Eastern Health
Submitted on 4/02/2019 at 9:41 AM
Published on Care Opinion at 12:17 PM


picture of David Plunkett

Dear Kazzabo

Thank you again for sharing your experience and please accept my apologies for the delay in sharing with you changes we have made as a result of your feedback and experience.

Some of the actions we have implemented have been:

- training for staff within the Eastern Health Contact Centre to better illicit the purpose for the call. This has worked well with patients looking to contact Specialist Clinics (outpatients) where the amount of time a person spends on line has reduced significantly

- an ongoing review process of calls received for quality

- making sure all areas have information available for patients and families on how to provide feedabck

I trust from this, you can see we are committed to making improvements to our care and services to better meet the needs of our community.

Wishing you the very best of health and with kind regards

David

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