"Very disappointing"

St Richard's used to be very good with nice helpful staff. No longer! The Scanning Department is particularly useless and unhelpful. And St R's appointment's system is Dickensian (sending incorrect/outdated letters by 2nd class post and making the patient telephone to correct errors/rearrange appt. 'Tis a nightmare to get thru' to the right person on the phone - they are either not there, on holiday, off sick, "not at their desk", on a training course etc.) My personal experience in 2013 was that St R's managed to: overrun the 2-week cancer scan deadline; give me the wrong medicine to deal with side-effects of chemotherapy; failed to make a follow-up appointment; failed to pass on blood test results to my GP etc. etc. And that doesn't even count the long waiting times (all the while one is paying steep parking charges) or having to walk for miles from one department to another or St R's consistent failure to keep the patient informed about appts or treatment. In fairness, the doctors/consultants are, generally, good but the rest of the staff - especially the admin staff - are unhelpful, impatient, unknowledgeable and generally give the impression that they are doing you a big favour. Furthermore, parking at St R's is a disaster for patients/visitors; there are very few parking bays for the public but loads for hospital staff - huh? Parking is also incredibly expensive (but not, I suspect, for hospital staff) Give me QA anytime - despite it being 20 miles farther away!