Worth reading. Management summary at the end.

I know 3 NHS hospitals fairly well. All pretty good. Typical shambolic NHS or any huge organisation in a few ways, good nevertheless.

Took the boss to another, Royal Surrey County Hospital for an allergy test yesterday.
Not good.
This is after them rearranging her appointment 3 times and saying she missed another that they hadn't told her about. She had to rearrange one of theirs as she was oop North.
Getting in :
Bearing in mind I'm with it, (better than most anyway !) this is a dogs dinner for everyone.
Starting with the signage to get in. Unclear at best. Poor IMO.
Worked out how to get in after finding no *left* turn at the entrance.
Fairly usual for NHS car parks it was full with loads of cars circulating looking for a place.
Saw a sign for a hospital entrance so dropped off the boss. Arranging to meet either where she was or at the main entrance.
Circulated for a while. Hopeless.
Decided to circulate wider looking for sense and a space.
At the back of the hospital. Loads of space - all reserved for staff and full with some double parking. About a million cars, approximately.
Find another entrance "Drop off and A&E" which is where I could have dropped off the boss had it been clear. Building works spread around nicely, messy.
This led to the car park I had been in before. Circulated. No space.
Thought required.
Pulled up in the shade !
Waited and watched for a space - Much as I used to do all those years ago in London.
A Space - Mine !
Back in to hear a gardener going at it with a very noisy cutter of some sort. Shame he didn't cut away foliage at the front to make signage visible.
I'm right beside the notice and the machine to pay. Brilliant.
Read the most confusing parking notice I have ever seen. About 6' from top to bottom, crammed with words and alternatives.
Notice the first thing you need is your car reg. Not clever for people parked a distance away who don't remember their reg. or who are not driving their own vehicle.
Minimum is £4. Not cheap. I have £3 in change.
Jist tells me I can go and find the boss and pay later.
Follow signs to entrance down a load of concrete steps. Ok for me. Very bad for others. Impossible for some.

Now to find the boss :
Into what may be the Main Entrance. No signage for departments unless I'm blind.
Guy in the reception area sorting out a punter.
Queue and speak to him with us shouting over the noise of the bloody coffee machine in the coffee shop.
How the hell can the poor guy work with that all day ?!
"Allergy clinic is "Outpatients" down there and left."
Go down 'there' and find the signage for where everything is. Great.
No. Allergy not mentioned. Ok I'll go left and take Outpatients.
From memory there appear to be Outpatients 1-16. That's as specific as you get mate.
Loooong corridor.
Reception about half way down with a vastly overweight guy dealing with a patient with a speech impediment while trying to also cope with the phone.
Position myself 4th in line.
Chatting to no.3 I say this may be the worst hospital I have ever been in.
"Looked after me very well" he said. Good to hear.
After a while I decide overweight receptionist is close to breaking and I feel for him. I'll move on elsewhere.
Right down to the end of the corridor. Ooh the end of the hospital. Look for someone who is not being worked to death and looks bright.
3 young ladies in another Outpatients reception area.
Ask them all where "allergy clinic"
Not a clue. What ?!
Helpful blonde at a PC asks DOB, Name and first line of address. She deserves a medal.
Ironically the Allergy clinic is across the corridor from where she is......
Go in to see "Reception is closed sign"
No sign of boss.
Read Phil Hammond's Medicine Balls for a while. Apt as he discusses what is wrong with the NHS. This is now 30 minutes after Boss's appointment.
Walk back to what may be main reception in case I missed her.
An incredible amount of staff walking the corridor as there have been all the time. What a waste.

Boss does not appear for a while so ask a intelligent looking nurse if she can help.
"Yes, she has been seen and has gone for a blood test. I'll take you"
To the blood test place and I find the boss !
She has ticket no.90. We are on about 86.
See sign on wall. "you can be blood tested at 'this list' of places or your GP"
So we don't need to wait.....
"87" off goes no.87
Woman next to me says she give up and walks out after having a conversation about buying a place, ringing the agent and putting in an offer. Tried not to listen but hard not to.
Nurse punter comes out and sticks a sign on the ticket machine to say they are closed to any new arrivals.
New arrival arrives and is told they are closed
We are closed. I was about to point out she can go to the list or her GP when nurse, after some long pause advises the same.
Oh good she says and off she goes.
Nurse goes on about how crap the doctors are sending people for a blood test after 4.30.
They have been told so many times. I had my boss email them and still they send punters.
Is it me or am I being simple. How about a clear sign saying
"No punters after 4.30pm" in the Doctors area and the blood test area ?
Underneath that "Blood tests available at your GP or the list"
Bad mouthing any member of staff or the system in front of punters is not acceptable.
Fix the system.
"98"
What ?
Have we stumbled into Monty Python does 1984 ?
Punters point out their numbers. Nurse punter wanders back into her room.
I helpfully shout out "42" - well it is the answer isn't it ?
She comes back
"Got that wrong 88"
88 has gone.
"Ok 89"
Then 90 and boss is done. Fabulous.
We walk the half mile or so back to the putative main entrance.
Boss ad I look at the parking noticeboard.
Seems to be around 3 or 4 different ways to pay, but if you don't "Check Out" you pay £19.
What a surprise this is run by a Ltd company who are minting it.
Hopefully sorted.
We drive off.

Boss tells me her story.
Receptionist looks her up, books her in (!) and misdirects her to the wrong place.
She is misdirected again and eventually gets to 'the place that shall not be known as the Allergy Clinic" late but fortunately ok as they are running a bit late.
When the boss sees the Doctor she is told it is a Gastro problem. No I am allergic. Doc is not English and does not have the full range of English.
Boss puts foot down. After waiting so long she will not be fobbed off. Doc eventually agrees.
On her way out the nurse who had been in on the consult says the boss could have an internal and external allergy. Thanks top nurse !



Well under par.
Look up the hospital. Hmmm

Royal Surrey County Hospital

Some lowlights
October 2006 to October 2007 a successful campaign was fought to save the hospital from closure. (Good it is still there. Shame the problems are still there as well)

May 2014 it was reported that the Trust was proposing to merge with Ashford and St Peter's Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. The proposed merger was abandoned in November 2016. (Wonder what that cost)
It forecasts a deficit of £7.9 million for 2016–17.
As of 2017 one sixth of all posts are vacant (No wonder the staff can't cope)
It was named by the Health Service Journal as one of the top hundred NHS trusts to work for in 2015. ( Out of how many ? There are worse ?)


Management Summary :
Decent Signage at this hospital will save so much time and money.
Let the staff have a say in how the place is run. I bet they know things the higher ups and admin don't even know exist.
Allow change to come from grass roots level.
From Phil Hammond, Medicine Balls
Don't have politicians or any other numpties running such an organisation. Top down is rubbish.
Do *not* throw money at the NHS. This has not and will not solve the problems.
There are brains available in many places.
Work on improvements and keep on forever

How can us punters help ........ ?

Oddly enough Frimley is counted somewhere near the very top.
From their newsletter it seems to be success on success. That could be good PR but they took over Wexham and Heatherwood hospitals which were in a bad way (I read)

Hmm.
I'm a bit pissed of with the NHS at the moment.

I don't doubt that (and I have seen many examples) they are excellent at emergencies.
Have a bad accident, or a stroke or heart attack or cancer.
Whoosh - no problem getting some prompt action.

But for non-emergencies ....
I've a bad ear infection atm - ear ache, hearing loss, dizzyness - and after a couple of weeks of failed treatments my GP referred me ("very urgent", I saw the letter) to an NHS ENT specialist.
I got the referral info through today, logged on to the system to book a "very urgent" appointment - earliest slot was 102 days away.
Urk - let's face it - that is CRAP.

I went to have a chat with my GP surgery about it - can't do much - how about going private?
They sent info on to private hospital this morning.
I phoned the private hospital up this afternoon and booked an appointment with an ENT consultant for tomorrow morning.

You know all those headlines saying things like "the NHS is at breaking point" and so on? They're not just empty rhetoric designed to scare people.

Sorry, Mike, it's nothing to do with the tabloids.  It's just taken me 10 minutes to find these quotes from people who are actually a part of the National Health Service...






A lot of us, especially people with major health problems #1 cannot afford to "go private"  and #2 don't see why we should have to go private as we've already paid for a health service all of our working lives. 

One of the sites I visited was advertising for A&E nurses in the private sector at £46.00 per hour.  Some NHS nurses are having to take second jobs and use food banks.  That's one reason you can go private and get things done, Mike; they can afford to poach the best staff from the NHS and can afford to staff their wards safely.

It really isn't scaremongering.

My experience of the NHS has always been pretty good. There has been the odd slip up but on the whole that is more to do with their lack of available time rather than them having done anything intentionally.

I always have my Flu Jab at the local surgery and also get medication from the local pharmacy.

My only real gripe is the way in which Consultants behave as though they are gods and treat the people lower in the business than them like dirt they found on their shoe, but that is something that is very systemic in the NHS and medical communities in general.

I've just found this on my Twitter time-line.  It's from an American, and it was part of a series of Tweets and replies about our NHS and that it might be dismantled and sold off.
This, he says, was his bill for a broken ankle.

The price of hospital admissions/procedures is ridiculous.

When I had my pacemaker/defibrillator fitted, the cost of the devise alone was £30,000 and then the cost of having fitted in total cost £120,000. I was in the hospital for a total of around 2 hours, with most of that waiting around.

This was private, but gives you an idea!

No wonder Yanks go bankrupt