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Parking

Posted By robsta

"Parking"

About: Heartlands Hospital / General surgery

(as the patient),

Whilst my recent medical treatment could not be faulted, I am annoyed with your parking charges. I had a 10: 25 appointment with my consultant.

I politely arrived early for this appointment, as I feel this is good manners. However, I was not seen until 11: 05 am. This 40 minute wait is, I feel, unacceptable when the car park charges are clicking over to the next hour. Consequently I had to pay a 2 hour parking charge for 1 hour and 17 minutes. 40 of these 77 minutes were spent in a waiting room and my actual consultation lasted for about 40 seconds!

Where an appointment time is so late I feel that the administrative staff should be able to write off the extra parking charges caused by excessive lateness.

I then went on to the patient feedback tab for the hospital, sent my message but it came back as undeliverable.

Rant over!

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Responses

Response from Marie Helebert, Patient Services Officer, Patient Services, Heart of England Foundation Trust 8 years ago
Marie Helebert
Patient Services Officer, Patient Services,
Heart of England Foundation Trust

Work with patients & families to highlight and address any issues relating to patient experience.

Submitted on 17/02/2016 at 13:17
Published on Care Opinion at 15:19

Dear robsta

Thank you for your feedback following an attendance at Heartlands Hospital to see your consultant.

I am sorry that you were delayed at your appointment, which meant that your car parking charge was increased due to this delay, and I do appreciate your frustration.

Unfortunately, although each appointment is a 15 minute slot, each patient is individual and they may have health problems which require more than the 15 minute time slot. Outpatient staff and doctors do everything they can to ensure that outpatient clinics run to time to prevent long waits in clinic for patients, but this is sometimes unavoidable. I am sorry that you felt your waiting time was excessive.

Can please ask you to contact me at your convenience so that I may obtain some more information from you to first of all determine the cause of the delay in being seen, and also to raise the point about the car parking charge on your behalf?

I am concerned to note that you had difficulty in forwarding your feedback directly to the trust and would also like to discuss this further.

I can be contacted on 0121 424 0808 or by email: marie.helebert@nhs.net.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards

Marie Helebert
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