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Care Opinion

Huge wait times despite booked appointment

Posted By User5

"Huge wait times despite booked appointment"

About: King Edward Memorial Hospital / Maternity

(as the patient),

I recall this happens every time I have to come here. But I feel today is the worst. As usual it took me ages to park. From what I've seen there is hardly any parking at King Eddie’s and I believe heavily pregnant patients are expected to drive around for ages and then walk in the heat from some distant side street parking.

Ultrasound booked for 11am, I rang at 10:50 to say I’m at the hospital but still driving around looking for parking but was definitely attending my appointment (I had arrived at 10:40 but nowhere to Park). I was told “don’t worry, we are running behind by one hour for ultrasounds”. So once parked I took my toddler to get them a sandwich as they were going to be in the crèche longer than anticipated.

I arrived at the Ultrasound dept approx 11:50 after dropping my toddler off at the clinic . I was told it would still be about another 30 mins.  But I didn’t get seen until 1300! A 2 hour delay from my original appointment time. Then the sonographer tried to tell me they actually see patients in order of arrival and not order of booked appointment! So I believe I essentially had been bumped even further down the already very delayed list because I didn’t physically check in until 1150 (even though I called at 1050 to say I’m here and coming, just need to park).

I then missed my booked midwifery appointment (luckily I’m with MGP and my amazing midwife Steph was able to squeeze me in later after my ultrasound). But my child has been in the crèche too long and I’ve gone over on my parking. It’s my day off work today and instead of getting things done here then enjoying my day off or getting a rest (I’m high risk pregnancy) I’ve been spent a lot of my day waiting to park or waiting for ultrasound. I feel it really is not acceptable to run so late in a pre booked clinic and in my opinion, definitely not ok to see patients in order of arrival when you are given a booked appointment.

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Responses

Response from Delaney Gibbons, Director, Safety Quality and Performance, Safety, Quality and Performance, Women and Newborn Health Service 2 months ago
We are preparing to make a change
Delaney Gibbons
Director, Safety Quality and Performance, Safety, Quality and Performance,
Women and Newborn Health Service

Submitted on 6/02/2024 at 6:26 PM
Published on Care Opinion on 7/02/2024 at 11:55 AM

picture of Delaney Gibbons

Dear User5,

I would like to start by thanking you for taking the time to provide feedback about your recent experience at King Edward Memorial Hospital.

I am sorry to hear about the challenges you faced to attend your ultrasound appointment, including finding parking, walking in the heat, and making arrangements for your toddler’s visit to the creche. The subsequent delays to your appointment would have been very frustrating, especially after your very considerate efforts to advise the department of your imminent arrival.

We’ve followed up with the department after receiving your feedback, and on reflection, it would have been preferable to advise you to attend the department as soon as possible after your arrival. This would have given us the opportunity to verify your details and convey to the clinical team that you were present and ready for your appointment. We’ll follow up with the team to seek to ensure this miscommunication doesn’t happen again in the future. Our clinic teams work tirelessly to keep clinics running smoothly - including balancing booked and emergency imaging requests - and are committed to minimising delays. The Imaging Department were saddened to hear of the impact the delays had on you, and regret that this was your experience. On a positive note, I was happy to hear that Steph was able to rearrange your midwifery appointment so that you were still able to be seen on the day.

We have a dedicated group of staff exploring options to improve the outpatient experience, and we will provide your story to that group, so that they can consider your feedback when developing improvement strategies. If you’d like to provide any further details about your experience, I would encourage you to contact our Consumer Liaison Service (phone: 6458 1444 or email WNHS, Consumer Liaison Service WNHSCLS@health.wa.gov.au ) and they can put you in touch with one of the Project Leads.

Once again, thank you for your feedback. Feedback such as yours assists our service in making improvements for our patients. I do hope you will contact the CLS so that we can rectify this issue for you.

Kind regards,

Delaney

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