"Community Phlebotomy service"

My mother is currently undergoing Chemotherapy and has not been fitted with a pic line. For convenience and before she starts her next cycle, I have been attempting to establish if she can have her bloods taken at one of the community Phlebotomy services. I spent the best part of an hour this morning, ringing multiple telephone numbers I had been provided with along the way (eight in total) and not one person who answered a telephone was able to answer my question, which I feel is extremely poor.

Whilst my mother and I understand and appreciate the reason why she needs to have her blood taken before each cycle of chemotherapy, at the same time you cannot ignore the fact that it costs a lot of money having to commute back and forth to hospital. To be expected to attend hospital over a course of two days; day one to have bloods taken and day two to see the Oncologist and to collect medication; can and does create a financial strain when you do not have access to unlimited resources. Therefore, for financial reasons I am attempting to limit my mother’s visit to the hospital to one per cycle as opposed to two.

I was under the impression that the idea behind Liverpool Community Health is to make some of the services previously provided within Hospital settings, more accessible to individuals within their own communities. Yet when attempting to access these services you hit the proverbial brick wall of not being able to get a straight answer to a simple question. Also, it is not made easy to contact any of the community Phlebotomy services as there are very few telephone numbers made via the internet to be able to contact them.

It saddens me to say but I feel that the idea of community health does not work.