The Royal Free Hospital

Open letter to the Chief Executive of the Royal Free Hospital

• THANK you for your letter [of October 23] about the failure to solve the problem of transport to Chase Farm for patients who need the services you have transferred there and who are dependent on public transport.

Your letter does not answer the questions which the Caversham’s Patient Participation Group, on whose behalf I write, put to you:

– When are you going to allow Healthwatch Camden’s report on this to be published?

– Why don’t you seek sponsorship from local businesses for a shuttle bus; or pay taxi fares to & from Chase Farm for those who need a taxi?

– When are you going to take serious steps to inform patients that, as you have assured us, they can opt for treatment at Royal Free Pond Street instead of Chase Farm? There should be really big notices in the Pond Street reception area telling patients that they have this right.

We have just come across yet more examples of the right to opt for Royal Free Pond Street being concealed from patients.

First, a woman of about 65, who actually lives within a stone’s throw of Royal Free Pond Street was made to go to Chase Farm for a knee operation (and for all the pre-op including blood tests she’d already had at Pond Street).

Without any kind of after-care package she was discharged from Chase Farm – indeed told she must leave, they needed the bed – less than 48 hours after her knee operation. obviously in no fit state for a public transport journey involving four changes and 40 minutes walking.

With immense difficulty – she’d been told she could use wi-fi from her hospital room, but this was not the case – she contacted her grand-daughters who had to leave their work to drive out to Chase Farm and give her a lift home, Otherwise she’d have had to take a taxi all the way, an expense she can ill afford.

Second, a patient who’d had open-heart surgery at another hospital was referred to the Royal Free for follow-up treatment. The nurse at the other hospital insisted he must go to Chase Farm for this. She had clearly not been informed by the Royal Free that patients can opt for Pond Street instead.

The patient pointed out that this made no sense – he lives within walking distance of Pond Street – and thought he’d got the matter sorted out, but on his preparatory visit to Pond Street he found that, sure enough, without consultation he’d been booked into Chase Farm and was expected to travel out there a week after open heart surgery.

In fact the follow-up treatment is available at Pond Street and was actually given there, when he pressed for this. But one wonders how many patients have been bamboozled…

The Royal Free should be ashamed at treating ill patients like this.

RODERICK ALLISON
Chair, Caversham Patient Participation Group