A couple have suffered a nightmare experience waiting for hospital patient transport that never turned up.
A Pangbourne couple say they were left stranded when patient transport failed to turn up after hospital treatment.
Linda and Terry Allen travel to hospitals for Mr Allen’s care after he suffered a stroke. After A&E at the Royal Berkshire Hospital on 24 October, he was recovering at Prospect Park Hospital in West Reading but needed to be taken back from John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.
The EMED Group was due to collect them, but the patient transport van never arrived.
Mrs Allen said: “I’ve got no complaints from John Radcliffe, they even offered us a bed – it’s this wretched transport, they left us stranded.”
She praised the driver who brought them: “They got us there no problem, a woman drove us, she was great.”
After treatment things went wrong. “We were meant to be picked up about 2pm, but no one came.” By 3pm the head of the vascular department tried to ring them but they couldn’t get through. “Then a staff nurse said they are not coming. I couldn’t believe it. We were finally told they wouldn’t be coming at 9pm.”
In the end, her son-in-law from Tilehurst and her daughter collected Mr Allen. “My daughter even offered to pick us up earlier, but I didn’t feel I could accept that help, we believed they were going to come. We dropped Terry off at midnight, I got so tired my daughter drove me home. I got back about 12.30am and that was our day, I’ve never known anything like it. It was all booked with them [EMED Group].”
Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service the day after, Mrs Allen added: “I feel weak and wobbly, it’s unforgivable, there’s no reason, it was all unnecessary, the dear hospital staff kept trying to track the driver, they kept fobbing them off. The people at Prospect Park were devastated. This needs airing, it’s dreadful. You feel all shook up, we’re tired with it all.”
The nightmare journey occurred on Tuesday, November 1,1, and Mrs Allen says similar problems happened again. The couple are pursuing a formal complaints process.
EMED Group said: “We note the concerns raised and will contact the patient directly to discuss these with him. The relevant patient experience manager will investigate what happened on the day and we’ll share the outcome with the patient once that’s complete.”
Mrs Allen also reported further trouble with transport for an appointment at Townlands Memorial Hospital in Henley on Thursday, 12 December. She said: “They just do not turn up, the hospitals are brilliant. The issue is still going on; it is very exhausting. Nothing happens, and some of the people they have on the phone are so rude. They seem to be taking on too many people. I felt distraught with it, I have no confidence, I’m dreading it.”
The incidents were covered by ITV Meridian on 18 December.
James Aldridge, Local Democracy Reporter
