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Great care but reporting could be improved

Posted By patient at centre

"Great care but reporting could be improved"

About: Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital / Emergency Department Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital / Medical Imaging

(as a parent/guardian),

My son, who is a young adult, presented to the hospital for testicular pain.  

What went well: My son was seen quickly by the ED Doctor, given pain relief and then seen by the urology team.  

Things, in my opinion, to improve: When he was discharged he wasn't given any information about having an ultrasound which we were surprised about as his pain was ongoing. The next day the ultrasound department contacted him with an appointment time which was good but not communicated at discharge.  A few weeks after the ultrasound and he hasn't had a result communicated to his GP, despite, as we understand it, his GP chasing the report twice.  We asked our son to call the hospital and they said they had found the report at the bottom of a pile of reports that they had and had a big backlog so would send the report to the GP that day.

Thank you for the great timely care in ED.  Please look at how you improve your reporting to primary health care and patients.  Hopefully, my son's ultrasound result will be ok, but what if it isn't and he didn't persist following this up. Please remember to keep the patient at the centre of all your processes, as much as the clinical team did in the ED

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Responses

Response from Janet Zagari, Executive Director, Sir Charles Gairdner Osborne Park Health Care Group 2 years ago
Janet Zagari
Executive Director,
Sir Charles Gairdner Osborne Park Health Care Group

Submitted on 7/10/2021 at 5:32 PM
Published on Care Opinion at 5:42 PM

picture of Janet Zagari

Dear patient at centre,

Thank you for sharing your son’s good healthcare experiences as well as highlighting aspects where we could improve.

I understand your concerns about your son not receiving information for an ultrasound referral on his discharge from the Emergency Department (ED), as well as the delay in receiving the ultrasound results and I apologise most sincerely.

It is usual to include information about diagnostic tests within discharge letters and I am sorry to hear that this did not occur for your son. Demand for our ED services has been increasing significantly and I am advised that there is currently a backlog of Discharge Summary letters to GPs. We strive to provide the best quality patient-centred healthcare services possible and we are continuously monitoring and implementing measures to address the demand for ED services as well as the timeliness of Discharge Summaries.

I would like to assure you that when a diagnostic test reveals an abnormality requiring urgent treatment, the referring clinician is contacted immediately in order to follow up with their patient and ensure that the appropriate course of action is taken.

Ultrasound reports are available electronically very soon after the procedure is completed and GPs are able to contact the department directly to request a report. In order to ensure that GPs are aware of this option, I will request our Hospital Liaison GP to send a reminder via the GP network.

I am pleased to hear that your son received timely care in the Emergency Department and trust that he has since received any treatment he needed via his GP.

Kind regards,

Janet

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Update posted by patient at centre (a parent/guardian)

Thank you for responding and trying to improve things. Just for your information, my child’s GP followed up three times before receiving a copy of the report.

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