"Following the instructions in her..."

What could be improved

Following the instructions in her appointment letter my 87 year old mother duly arrived for a cataract operation. It transpired that the operation was scheduled for the next day! This administrative error involved a 2 hour round trip and the same on the following day.

Prior to this she had had 2 phone calls from nursing staff on the ward about her pre-op assessment plus the actual assessment, during which I was present. On these occasions no one picked up on the fact that her surgeon did not operate on any Wednesday. This is not the first time that there has been an appointment mix up. Last year my mother had an outpatients appointment, for which I tried in vain to ascertain the relevance. I was assured she needed to attend, after waiting for an hour we were told that no one knew who had made this appointment and she did not need to be there!

Anything else?

I would like to see fewer admin errors, to avoid wasting staff and patients time and effort!