"Box Hill Outpatients"

Last week I attended Box Hill Hospital outpatients with my toddler for a followup appointment after surgery. Less than 24 hours earlier we received a voicemail message asking us to bring a referral from our GP. There was no way we could get to the GP before the appointment and the GP really has nothing to do with this case. Eastern Health performed the surgery and Eastern Health asked us to come back for a followup appointment. It seems a waste of time and resources to take the toddler to a GP for a referral when we are already in your system. The receptionist at outpatients told me she would have to ask another Eastern Health staff doctor to write us a referral and we would have to wait longer while that happened. I apologised and she said, this is just not the way we normally do things. I was made to feel like I was an irresponsible parent. She claimed that I would have been told at the last appointment that I would need another referral. I was not.

My second issue is the wait time. I was told my appointment was 9am and I was at the clinic at 9am. We were not seen by a doctor until 10: 45am. I heard the receptionist tell another patient that all appointments are at 9am. Why would you have all patients attend at the same time, only to wait for an hour or two for their turn? I don't mind waiting a while if the doctors are running behind time but it is unreasonable to expect me to sit for so long in a crowded waiting room with a toddler and nothing to do (there's not even phone reception! ) when you could easily see from your list of appointments that numerous patients will be seen before me. You could at the very least inform me how many patients are ahead of me and estimate my wait time. I felt unable to take my child to get a drink or to take them to the toilet because I was worried we would miss our appointment but after an hour and a half I had to take the risk. There must be a better system. Surely you could offer appointment times like GPs do.