Manor Hospital 2017-05-13 Person 2 5 0

On balance ... Avoid, avoid avoid !!! Demand a referral to the appropriate regional center which specialises in your condition, or be prepared to suffer inordinate delays whilst being passed from pillar to post. Increasingly it seems to provide a poor service for poor people, treating patients like the objects in the grammar of medicine. A bit like the proverbial curates egg, parts are good and match the mission statement, as for the system as a whole ... well, as clichés about Walsall indicate, a scale needs to be extended downward to accommodate the level of performance shown by the system as a whole. Individuals working within the Hospital system are frequently caring, committed and willing to go that extra mile, and then a bit more to provide care and to treat patients with compassion and consideration. As for the system as a whole it seems unfit for purpose and, despite the heroic extra efforts put in by many of those working within the system, makes a mockery of its vague and meaningless Mission Statement. Inordinate delays to diagnosis and treatment seem to be produced by an incredibly inefficient system to exchange data and informations between the various sub-systems. Inefficient sub-systems subvert and cancel out the efforts of more caring and efficient areas to provide an adequate patient experience and to provide timely treatment. My experiences at this hospital is both subjective and has overall not been good over the last 40 years. Venal Proctologists, who used long waiting lists and queue jumping private consultations to boost their income, were additionally towards the lower end of a surgical competence index ... a nurse working under him who knew me as a Lecturer said her dad was a butcher and he wouldn't allow him to cut up a carcass let alone prepare a joint, was horrified to find me amongst his patents recovering from surgery. In mitigation this venal character did have excellent social and counseling skills. My next experience was to appear at A&E after a heart attack to find equipment not working, the ward understaffed, apparently being run by a GP whose major skill was to exude confidence who had been drafted in as an emergency locum, who sent me home despite the protestations of the paramedics who had delivered me to his 'care'. Perhaps the hospital could raise the exception of a perfect storm. I had the MI at just after midnight and my GP had been struck off the list of medical practitioners for the second time, at the stroke of midnight. As I said the scales of evaluation needs to be extended downwards to cater for Walsall. My treatment was also affected because vital data was lost by the information systems within the Trust. When I finally met a cardiologist several painful and life threatening weeks later I discovered that I had had a heart attack and the severe bouts of angina I experienced were a result of this MI and not indigestion brought on by stress. I had to drag myself into A&E to deal with what I, but not the out of hours service contracted by my new GP surgery regarded as a pressing emergency of steadily deteriorating unstable angina the situation improved and despite a severe telling off for getting out of bed to read my chart and finding that I was allowed heroin to deal with my pain my treatment improved, appropriate medication was prescribed and I was stabilised. Apart from a slightly botched incision for the subsequent angiography the treatment was good. I was in an area of competence for a change. My next experience was not positive, but then the NHS as a whole and comparative medical systems abroad were unable to deal adequately with the clinical entity that afflicted me as a consequence of a viral infection. Normally this condition goes away by itself after a few days, weeks, months or years. the appreciate vestibular rehabilitation therapy (VRT) was unavailable. But the delays to treatment and for consultant to consultant referrals for appropriate diagnosis consequent upon the failures of the information system within the Manor Hospital would have significantly reduced the possibility of an adequate outcome from this treatment. It was not a case of too little too late, it was the 'not-got- go-away' situation compounded by the rudeness of 'a locum of consultant rank' for which I eventually got a reluctant and mealy mouthed apology after persistent harassment of those charged with wearing down those who dare to complain. Surprisingly my second MI was dealt with competently, with efficiency, care and compassion. My next encounter was horrific. Urology was appalling, the consultant was possibly a dab hand with the needle and knife but lacking in social skills. It is possible that the man was a high achiever and used his intelligence to somewhat mechanically apply techniques to achieve a facsimile of social interaction to compensate for being 'on the scale'. Or perhaps he was a rude, arrogant and angry man who objected to interacting with lesser mortals. The delays to diagnosis and his management of information flows resulted in a significant and life endangering delay to my treatment for cancer, way outside the Government time limit for referral to treatment. Once inside the Oncology section my treatment has seemed to be over-fulfilling the standards set out in the hospitals Mission Statesmen and shines like a rare beacon of excellence like the The National Opera and Ballet Theatre in Tirana, Albania in the Communist era ... described as a beautiful, healthy rose bush growing in a cess pit. Urology did not improve with the appointment of a new consultant. Inordinate delays before appointments, inadequate triage and had I not been rescued by a compassionate and prompt response from Oncology to a begging letter I sent to my ex-consultant, a serious and life threatening delay to treatment ... I had had bone scans, MRI and been referred for radiography before the Urology consultant deigned to see me as a result of a GPs emergency referral. I am still waiting for a follow up appointment for an operation designed to rectify damage consequent upon a failure of the Hospital Trust inability to circulate information between sub-systems resulting in poor treatment and internal trauma. This is the second time the follow up appointment has been missed out, relying on the ability of the 'PALS' service to souther and divert concerns raised by patients. Like these follow up appointments they are allowed to default until they time out and are dropped. A junior member of the Oncology team was appalled by my treatment. He did not linger and disappeared after trying to do something about it. Vascular surgery appears to work well and like oncology is a beacon of competence in an institution buffering from departmental competence interacting with systemic failure. Information fails to circulate in a timely manner and horrific delays to treatment occur when a functioning system like vascular surgery has to interact with chaotic systems like those of Urology. This is compounded by the inability of the Manor Hospitals information systems to communicate with those of the regional centers of excellence where matters like vascular and cardiac surgery are performed, resulting in inordinate delays to treatment even when pushed by a consultant to consultant referral. My recent experience of Cardiology has been catastrophic. Inordinate delays for appointments, long delays for diagnostic tests and having to be pro-active to minimise the delays as one is passed from pillar to post. You will need to harass consultants secretaries and co-ordinating PAs, who are by an large 'la creme de la creme' of secretarial competence, and still willing to try harder and go that extra mile' to speed up the transition from post back to pillar as delays lengthen to way beyond 18 weeks and one experiences chaos, incompetence but not treatment. Despite beacons of good practice, this is a failing institution.