"Staff A1 but logistics terrible"

My spouse was admitted yesterday to adult emergency care. In my experience, everybody you deal with in hospital was charming, helpful, pleasant, competent without exception. Medical stuff is first class, but I feel the logistics are absolutely terrible. This morning I came in to collect my spouse at 10am after they've had electric shock therapy. I mean already their atrial fibrillation was back to normal. Cardiologist said it might be useful to do another electric shock therapy to settle it down, that was fine it was their medical judgment and not a problem. That’s finished, then there was minor sedation but my spouse got over that and they're still in adult emergency care.

The story here is it took 5 hours just with paperwork to be discharged. 5 hours with no medical problem, no medical impediment preventing walking out the door, none! The pharmacy has medications, they were charming and perfect. But no, we couldn’t walk from acute emergency ward to general ward because we had to be discharged from the ward first. But why?

We had to wait for a porter, they took an hour and a half, they don’t know if they are discharging my spouse from ED or from general hospital. There is no medical need to wait in the hospital but because of what I feel is the logistic cock up we have to wait.

Then we were parked in the waiting room in the cardiology unit who had no bed for my spouse, we just had to wait for an hour or two. The nurses were just lovely, everybody charming. A lovely Irish nurse said they would page the doctor to see if we could just have the discharge letter posted to us. But when she pages the doctor they are busy so she can’t page them for another 30 mins. By this time we’ve spent nearly 6 hours unnecessarily.

Overall, the medical staff are A1. The clinical treatment, A1. The medical procedure was thorough and excellent, all the staff were helpful without exception. But the logistics were appalling. It took more than 5 hours to get discharged after all medical procedures have been finished. After all medical protocol had been finished and completed satisfactorily, and the patient has fully recovered, why does it take 5 hours to get discharged?