"Elderly patient waited all day for a cancelled surgery"

My elderly parent was booked in for a cataract operation a few days ago. We got there at mid-morning I think and they had been fasting from the night before. Basically, my parent had been there with no food or water all day, waiting for surgery and around 5:30pm – 6pm they were sent home. They sent us home and saying they won’t have surgery that day. We were really angry and would like to have been told earlier seeing that they are an elderly patient with other health conditions.

In my opinion, there’s a lot of mismanagement. The other day they called us in for an appointment for my parent as they needed to do a pre-assessment for a lens. They were sent home that day with no explanation. We think now that they hadn’t done the assessment, they are missing information. My relative in-law took my parent in that day and they said it took the doctor 15mins to locate my parent's file. It seemed they couldn’t figure out what was going on and could not find any of their information. They were then asking my in-law questions about my parent's condition which they had no idea about, because that should’ve been on their file.

I also feel that communicating between departments needs improvement. They are searching for information when I feel they should’ve had this. If anything, if the pre-assessment didn’t happen in the other appointment then why go ahead with booking the surgery that day? They should’ve just told them earlier to go home seeing that they are a high-risk patient.