"Undignifying"

Anything else?

Dear Readers, I had the most horrible experience (still ongoing) with this Hospital. My father has been referred by our GP to this hospital with a suspected cancer for diagnosis and assessment. What happened next was a very surreal and traumatic experience. Because we belong to an ethnic minority, we have been discriminated against throughout all stages, ever since being initially referred here. The policy of the hospital trust is to restrict access to the hospital to ethnic minorities so unless you have a British passport don't even think of going there. My father had his referral rejected, then when we complained, after a few days they decided to 'accept' the referral or so they said. A appointment for an endoscopy was scheduled over the phone for my father who is 66 and type 1 Diabetic - insulin dependant. He is told to not eat nor have any medicine at all - including medicine that he needs to lower his blood pressure or thin his blood to prevent a heart attack as he will be seen promptly and taken care of in the morning at 8:45 at the hospital. We punctually and naively follow instructions and attend the hospital for the endoscopy only to be stopped before the procedure, which was scheduled for 9AM in order to be interrogated for over 1.5 hours by staff from the Overseas patients department to try and force us to sign papers to entitle the hospital to recover the fees from the government of my dad's nationality even though my father is a European Citizen residing in Britain and entitled to NHS hospital treatment. Abusive and inappropriate lines of questioning while medical treatment was being delayed without even being seen by a doctor.My father wasn't even seen by a nurse until I raised concerned over his blood glucose. I demanded to not further delay urgent medical investigations over a discriminatory agenda. The staff did everything in their power to cancel the procedure . My fathers life was endangered as even though the staff was aware that he has not taken his blood pressure lowering medicine, he didn't even have his blood pressure measured until after 1 hour and 45 minutes. After a strenuous interrogation we were allowed to enter the endoscopy room to have the procedure carried out when even though my dad was already changed into a hospital gown, the consultant whom we see for the first time decided not to carry on with the procedure and instead ordered another test and told us 'we are in the wrong hospital' then he discharged my father without any medical advice whatsoever. We were so shocked that we even forgot that he didn't take his medicine - he stayed off his medicine the whole day. Luckily we remembered about his insulin. Unless you have a British name, they will do everything they can to refuse your referral and if you leave them with no choice they will stand at very low levels to deter you from using their hospital.