"Very bad service at reception"

Anything else?

I had very severe pain in my right arm / shoulder and I was unable to lift my arm. My sister and I drove to Newham General Hospital. There was no way to pay by card and the machine only accepted coins. I tried to find a cash point around as unfortunately we did not have enough coins, but there was none around and there was one in the Hospitl which charged £1.85 for transaction. I withdrew the money , but still did not have any coin. For our so called convinience, there is a machine in the hospital to give coins, but surprise, it does not work!!! So you go to the cafeteria, buy something and get some coins. Finally you get lucky to pay £2 for 3 hours without paying a penalty while your car stays without a valid display slip as there was one person waiting in the car to explain to the warden what is going on. In all this malarkee, you waste around half hour and make your way hopint to get your issue looked into by a doctor. You go to the reception and you say you have evere pain and still you are told it will take 4 hours for the doctor to see you. You agree and make your way to the waiting area and see few people come after you and are told same 4 hour story (I was sitting close to the reception) to a person who has similar issue and comes only around 30 minutes after you and few more who are seen and manage to leave the hospital after seeing the concerned specialist long before you are even called to be seen. After around 2 hours wating, you go to check with the reception how long it will take, you are told your issue is not serious, so you are looking at another 2 hors to wait. You ask is severe pain which did not let one sleep the whole night despite taking pain killer not serious enough to qualify for a little escalation, you are give some exact figure that you have waited only 1hour 58 minutes so far and one person has been waiting for last 3 hours and 40 minutes. When yo ask for feedback form, you are told it is usual and was already advised it will take four hours. The people at the reception was talking to other memebers of stall / on the phone. You will be surprised to see one person comes in with a cut on his hand and is holding it to stop bleeding and ther are 2 people at the counter and is not called forward and was told to wait in the queue to be called when he came forward to enquire. He is then told to hold on to the wound and wait for 4 possible hours before seeing an specialist. I dont understand how can Emergency service be acceptable if average wait time is 4 hour. I appreciate the number of people who are there in the queue, but it could have been more efficient. I am sorry, but I felt I should have used my private health insurance I pay for on top of my regular taxes and will most probably be going for that in the future.