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Care Opinion

Appointment time delay

Posted By swinghr84

"Appointment time delay"

About: Perth Children's Hospital / Neuroscience and Neurology

(as a parent/guardian),

I had an appointment for my child with a neurologist that was supposed to be at mid-afternoon.

We got to the hospital around 20 minutes before and sat and waited for an hour and half with no sign of being seen. I then asked the reception person how long it would be. They told me there was another 3 patients before me. I felt disgusted that I would have had to have waited another 1-3hours before I was seen. I am 6 months pregnant, had to pull my child from school early just to sit in a waiting area for 2hrs. With a 2 hour round drive to get there and back also. My child's health means a lot to me but I am not waiting 4hrs to be seen when I had an appointment time set. Nobody even thought to call me before the appointment to let me know that this neurologist was running late or whilst I was sitting there.

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Responses

Response from Linda Hop, Acting Nurse Co-Director, Medical, Child and Adolescent Health Service 3 years ago
Linda Hop
Acting Nurse Co-Director, Medical,
Child and Adolescent Health Service

Submitted on 12/03/2021 at 1:46 PM
Published on Care Opinion at 2:08 PM

Dear swinghr84,

Thank you for taking the time to provide your feedback and for sharing your recent experience at Perth Children’s Hospital.

I would like to sincerely apologise for your long wait time to be seen and acknowledge the frustration this has caused. I am also sorry that you feel let down by this aspect of our service and I would like to assure you that this is not the level of care that we strive for. However, sometimes delays in appointments can be unavoidable due to unforeseeable events. Every effort is made by the clinicians and nursing staff to keep appointments on time, and delays to a minimum. I am aware that many Outpatient Clinics do advise of the potential for long delays in the appointment letters that are sent out to patients to assist with planning.

I appreciate that you felt you could have received a call before the appointment to make you aware of the delay. Unfortunately, with the huge volume of outpatients that visit PCH every day, we currently do not have the capacity to contact every family to advise of expected delays. Please be reassured that the hospital is continuing to review and instigate processes to improve services for patients and their family.

In order for us to investigate your concerns and provide you with some answers about what caused the delay on the day of your appointment, I would encourage you to contact the Consumer Engagement team by calling (08) 6456 0032 between 8.30am-4.30pm Monday to Friday or email cahsfeedback@health.wa.gov.au.

We very much appreciate you providing feedback which allows us to review and improve where possible the services we provide.

Kind regards,

Linda Hop

Acting Nurse Co-Director | Medical Division

Perth Children’s Hospital | Child and Adolescent Health Service

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