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Care Opinion

Call centre

Posted By greenqm55

"Call centre"

About: Fiona Stanley Hospital

(as the patient),

I attended a lot of appointments at the hospital, but I have always had problems in getting through to the call centre to reschedule if I can't attend. I have been hung up on while on hold, waited over an hour on more than one occasion, been questioned about absolutely everything only to be told that they couldn't help at that time (?), and the final straw was recently when I phoned to reschedule an appointment with Rehab Orthotics. A staff member answered the call after about 5 minutes of waiting which I felt was refreshing. However, it soon turned sour. The staff member asked the reason why I wanted to reschedule.

I told them that I have painful ulcers on my foot, so I don't think that they can do the orthotic.

From then on, I felt the staff member was extremely rude to me, saying that I had other appointments at the main hospital clinics that I had rescheduled, cancelled and did not attend.

This is true, but when I have not shown up, I have called, usually more than once but have given up after more than an hour of waiting.

It seemed the staff member then proceeded to sonically question me, not asking, but telling me that I do have a mobile don't I? And so it went on from there.

After a couple of minutes of this, I told them that I found them unwelcoming and quite rude.

It seemed to me they confirmed that by hanging up on me.

I find this absolutely unwarranted behaviour. The staff member not only made me feel like crying, but now I will be unlikely to call again.

In my opinion, they should not be dealing with the public, especially when it involves mostly unwell people calling, only to feel interrogated and spoken to with what I recall was such a poor attitude.

Over the years I have attended literally hundreds of appointments, so of course I haven't been able to attend them all. I was even a patient in the hospital and missed two appointments (I couldn't attend of course) but it was recorded that I did not attend!

To say that I am upset about how I was spoken to is an understatement.

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Responses

Response from Neil Doverty, Executive Director Fiona Stanley and Fremantle Hospitals Group, South Metropolitan Health Service 2 years ago
Neil Doverty
Executive Director Fiona Stanley and Fremantle Hospitals Group,
South Metropolitan Health Service

Submitted on 25/03/2022 at 7:36 PM
Published on Care Opinion on 28/03/2022 at 9:30 AM

picture of Neil Doverty

Dear greenqm55,

Thank you for sharing your feedback via Care Opinion – I do appreciate the time you took to detail your experience. I am very sorry that your experience was negative; if I were in your position I would be frustrated too.

You raise two separate issues, the first being the difficulty being transferred from our main switch (helpdesk) to the relevant clinic, and the long waits you have experienced once transferred. The second, which was particularly disappointing for me to read, was the way you were spoken to when trying to reschedule your orthotic appointment.

Regarding being transferred from the helpdesk to the appropriate outpatient clinic, our helpdesk staff do their best to connect callers quickly, and to the correct area on the first call. I am sorry that you have experienced so many difficulties when calling FSH. Our helpdesk staff may have multiple extension number options to transfer a call to if a clinic is busy. Your feedback has been shared with our helpdesk team, so they are aware of the impact of your experience, and to assist in improving our service.

I am very sorry for the way your interaction with our staff member left you feeling. We strive to provide our patients with excellent care, every time, including during an inpatient stay, during an outpatient appointment, and during ad hoc phone calls to advise of a cancellation or trying to reschedule. I appreciate that you were trying to do the right thing in providing us with advanced notice of the need to reschedule, because you were experiencing pain, and as such to be spoken to in a rude way is not acceptable. Again, I am sorry that this happened to you. I have discussed your experience with our Outpatient Clerical Coordinator, who will remind all staff of the need to be compassionate, caring and most of all kind to all of our patients.

Please do continue to advise us if you need to reschedule or cancel – it helps us tremendously with the management of staff and ensuring other patients may fill an “empty” slot and perhaps be seen a little sooner than they would have otherwise. We will also endeavour to continue to work on the above two issues – and hopefully you will be able to notice a difference next time you call.

All the best with your upcoming appointments and care.

Kind regards,

Neil Doverty

Group Executive Director

Fiona Stanley Fremantle Hospitals Group.

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