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Appointment system

Posted By fornaxss96

"Appointment system"

About: Perth Children's Hospital / Oncology and Haematology Department

(as a parent/guardian),

Based on my experience, its unbelievable how bad I feel their system is in regards to updating their patients on any changes.

Here a few examples of what I experienced:

- After many long hours sitting on a plastic chair with my child, I have received a verbal confirmation of some kind of specialist telling that my child will be booked in 3 months from now, this is the day I and my child are looking forward to because its an important procedure. I even received a letter at home mentioning this. All great. I visited the hospital weekly for my child’s check-up meanwhile, everyone smiling. Fast forward 3 months, the big day, but at the desk they tell me there’s nothing booked in. Huh! I make frustrating calls and PCH and the nurse tells me sorry about that with a bunch of apparent excuses blaming others. I recall the Nurse says good news, fixed it and its going to be the following morning at 9. Right before hanging up I believe they confirmed that yes, they’ll text message me the confirmation. Guess what, nothing ever arrived. Not even a phone call. Next day at 9am, I get to hear that they cant find my child’s notes. Oh and as I understand it they are missing some paperwork too, even though it was all confirmed many months ago remember? Absolute clown show, I felt. I found there’s many more mistakes of their end that I haven’t written down.

- I feel they make up promises that they dont keep.

- The letters I received with appointment dates arrived most of the time 1 week after the mentioned date. Nice. This hospital is about an hour drive away from me.

- I have no follow up phone calls.

- I recall 0 emails. Hello 2022?

- I believe no one is held responsible. Shifting the patient (me) to other people/departments all the time.

I feel something needs to be done about it, if you’re reading this PCH.

It seems like 1.2 billion went into designing the building (which looks really great) and I feel like their IT system is so convoluted or horrible to work with that it might’ve been a better idea, in my opinion, to just share an Excel sheet on a USB stick around the departments.

Based on my experience, I am not coming back anymore.

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Responses

Response from Child and Adolescent Health Service - WA about a year and a half ago
Child and Adolescent Health Service - WA

Submitted on 7/10/2022 at 7:10 PM
Published on Care Opinion on 10/10/2022 at 10:19 AM

Dear fornaxss96,

Thank you for sharing your feedback about your experience at Perth Children’s Hospital.

I acknowledge the effort that parents and families make to ensure that they attend appointments on time and I am very concerned to hear that you had received letters with appointment dates a week after the mentioned date. What you have described sounds very frustrating and I sincerely apologise that your child’s appointments have not been well coordinated.

I would welcome the opportunity to respond to your concerns in more detail. Please contact our Consumer Liaison Office on (08) 64560 032 or by email at CAHSFeedback@health.wa.gov.au so that we can arrange an investigation and respond to your concerns in more depth.

Once again, thank you for taking the time to share your experience and for bringing your concerns to my attention.

Kind regards,

Nurse Co-Director, Medicine Division.

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