"Months waiting for an urgent appointment"

I was having cardiac problems with skipping beats and palpitations so my GP sent a referral to Canberra Hospital Cardiology requesting an urgent appointment. Cardiology never contacted me in regards to the appointment so I attempted to find out what was going on, I rang them over a dozen times per week and very rarely did anyone answer the phone.

On the few rare occasions when someone actually bothered to answer the phone they said they could not provide me with any information and would call me back. They never called me back, not even once.

After months of the Cardiology department seemingly ignoring my calls and requests for information I finally contacted my GP again to tell them that the Cardiology department would not give me an appointment. My GP contacted them and a couple of weeks later I received a letter from the cardiology department giving me an appointment in 3 months time.

So it took over 6 months to get the appointment which my GP had marked as urgent.

6 months for an urgent appointment? I feel this is extremely incompetent.

I finally had my appointment and I believe they did the bare minimum they could possibly do, a basic stress test.

After the test was complete, I recall the administering Doctor mumbled something grumpily that they can't do this every 6 weeks. I had no idea what the Doctor was grumbling about as I had never been there before.

I recall the Doctor said they would send me the results of the test. They did not. They never gave me any information at all. I felt all they wanted to do was to get rid of me as soon as possible and treated me as if I was wasting their time.

I have no idea where their priorities lie, but in my opinion, it definitely isn't patient care