Letter of complaint to Northwick Park Hospital

Well I have written it, my letter of compliant to Northwick Park Hospital. I am sure that nada will get done, and if by some amazing miracle I actually get a response, I will be posting it here so that if anyone is interested they can see what feeble excuse they come up with.

This is what I have sent to them tonight, and lets see what gets said.

I am writing to complain about the extremely poor service given to me at Northwick Park Hospital (NPH). I am absolutely disgusted with the service.

I have been seeing a cardiologist and in January 2005 I was told by them that I would be immediately referred to the Chelsea and Westminster because my problem is urgent, and that they needed to find out why I was suffering blackouts with no explanation.

Well that was January 2005, I found out yesterday that despite it being urgent, the letter was dictated in January 2005 and marked as urgent, it was typed in July 2005. It was deemed okay not to even type the letter for 6 months let alone send it to the Chelsea and Westminster hospital. They of course booked me in ASAP, whereas NPH couldn't even be bothered to type a referral letter to ensure that my health is taken care of.

I am absolutely disgusted, and many other choices of words that would be impolite to type. How is something that is clearly stated as urgent, left for 6 months. I shudder to think what non-urgent means at NPH.

This goes along with the complete and utter farce that meant I had to wait 2+ years from breaking my wrist to actually having an operation to have it fixed and right now I am having to go through all the physiotherapy whereas it should have been done in the beginning if someone had decided to actually make sure that patient health was important.

I would really like to know why I had to wait so long for a referral, one would think you would be aiming to get me pushed elsewhere to save you money. And why is it that your staff also managed to lose a 24 hour tape test for cardiology, forcing me to have to do another one.

This smacks of sheer incompetency, short sightedness, and downright disregard for a patients health. Nothing about this is right and I am really hoping you are able to come with a logical response, because other than actually sacking incompetent management I don't see how else this can be resolved, other than maybe hire more admin staff to ensure that letters are typed up. That would be a novel idea.

I would also like the name and address of the chief of staff, to make a formal complaint, as I feel this matter is obviously not something that NPH seem to be interested in dealing with.

As you can see I held back from really taking a shot at them.

I will also post in another entry just how bad the healthcare commission rated NPH and the trust it is part of, scary reading for those who are in North West London like myself. Remember that the commission is a governmental body too.