A MAN in chronic pain for almost a year who was told last summer he required an urgent assessment by an orthopaedic specialist at Dublin’s Tallaght hospital has had his appointment to see the specialist rescheduled three times without explanation.
Furthermore, William Trent from Inchicore in Dublin, whose vertebrae at the top and base of his spine are crushed leaving him almost totally housebound, has now discovered that two e-mails he sent to the hospital late last year trying to find out what he could do to ease his plight while waiting for his postponed appointment remained unopened until last week. He first received a letter from the hospital in September 2009 to say he would be seen by orthopaedic specialist Jacques Noel on December 3rd, 2009.
As a public patient he was prepared to wait three months to be seen but then about a week before he was due to attend the outpatient appointment, he received another letter saying it had to be rescheduled. No explanation was given. He was told to attend on March 11th, 2010, instead. But at the end of January this year he received a further letter saying the March appointment also had to be rescheduled and a new appointment for May 27th next was offered.
An extra final paragraph was added to this letter warning him that patients who didn’t turn up for two outpatient appointments in a row would be referred back to the care of their GP.
It also said “patients should be aware that failure to attend scheduled appointments may have negative clinical implications for their health, for which they themselves are responsible”.
Mr Trent thought this was an extraordinary warning given it was the hospital that had caused him not to turn up for his initial two appointments by cancelling them.
He also believes if the letter states he is responsible for any further damage to his health by not turning up for his appointments the hospital should be responsible for the deterioration in his condition if it cancels his appointments.
He set about e-mailing the hospital last December, trying to find out from the doctor in the back pain clinic who initially saw him last August and ordered X-rays and an MRI scan before referring him to Mr Noel what he could do to limit further damage to his back while waiting for his appointment. He did not receive any reply to either of two e-mails. He followed them up with a letter, this time by post, to the doctor on March 8th last saying even his GP had attempted, without success, to obtain information as to why his appointments were being continually cancelled without explanation.
His letter said: “I spend the vast majority of each 24 hours either sitting or laying down. I have absolutely no life, am in constant pain and have serious difficulties, especially as I live on my own . . . please acknowledge receipt of this letter and copy e-mails and let me have your advice/opinion so that I can have, at least, some peace of mind.”
On Friday he received a letter from the patient advocacy section of the hospital apologising for the delay in replying to his e-mails. The letter said the e-mail address he used – which is the one still given on the HSE website for the hospital – had been “closed off . . . over a year ago”. It added though that it had recently come to the hospital’s attention “that some e-mails were still getting through” to it.
Mr Trent questioned yesterday whether this meant there were large numbers of e-mails left unopened at the hospital, in addition to the thousands of GP referral letters which it was recently revealed had been left unopened. “How do you close something down if people can still send e-mails,” he wondered.
A spokeswoman for the hospital said the link to the info@amnch.ie e-mail address was removed from the hospital website some time ago. She said when the address was revisited recently only “a handful of queries” had been received on it and these are currently being followed up by the patient advocacy department.