"Attempts to organise domiciliary service"

Attempts to organise domiciliary service for an elderly patient with limited mobility

My elderly parent requires 6-monthly blood tests for their telehealth consultation with the blood clinic. Usually, my other elderly parent would telephone the number and speak to a person who would organise an appointment for the domiciliary service to come out to their house to draw blood.

Now the number goes to a general “Press this for that and that for something else“ robot menu hell, in my opinion, then you get to a 2nd layer of Robot menu, finally you get to a message which says “Mailbox is not set up on this extension“ and goes beep like it’s an answering machine.

Well if it is an answering machine, I believe it’s going to be full of messages from confused elderly people and lots of abuse. Considering my parent has been calling for a week and no one has called them back I guess it’s not a voicemailbox.

If you call the number on the blood test form, it goes straight through to the hospital where the telehealth consultation comes from and they do not have anything to do with the domiciliary service!

So I have taken time off work to drive my elderly parents to the hospital to get the blood test done. Which I believe kind of defeats the purpose of having telehealth consultations because of COVID-19, doesn’t it?

Stop trying to make everything digital and stop trying, in my opinion, to stop members of the public interacting with helpful human beings please. I believe it just results in frustration and anger.