The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery 2012-12-31 Person 3 5 0

I have had cause to complain to my specialist about the service provided by The Brain Tumour Service in the past. There are many caring & professional staff in this department, but I have previously left messages stating that I was having uncontrolled & repeated epileptic seizures (when they were well controlled), & wanted medical advice. These messages were ignored on a number of occasions, leaving me in great distress. I can at least say that this did seem to come down to the actions of one or two staff, who admitted that the messages had been received (but went quiet when asked why the messages has not been passed on). After e-mailing the specialist directly, things have improved. The one great failing of this hospital is in regards to receiving copies of MRI scans. My previous hospital provided me with a free CD copy within a matter of minutes, so that I could get a second opinion, whereas at The National Hospital For Neurology one has to contend with a very unpleasant & unsympathetic medical records administrator, who was incredibly cagey as to "why I needed it", & charged £10.00 for each CD (not easy for someone on benefits, & the last time I checked a CD cost about £0.10 - a massive markup). The billing department then kept billing me for the items, despite me providing proof that the direct debit had taken the funds from my account. It was also disturbing to receive a file with the notes relating to another patient - when I rang the medical records department, I was asked "oh, could you post it back"? A leading brain tumour charity has stated that the notes for another patient of this hospital were lost three times in a row. This is a completely unacceptable situation.