Who is to blame for this inconvenience?

I ATTENDED University Hospital Walsgrave for an out-patients consultation.

All went well and I was given a prescription for medicine to be dispensed by Lloyds on site.

After sitting waiting for some 20 minutes I was called forward to collect.

As the assistant was wrapping the medicine she casually said that they only had half the amount. So, now what happens I asked. Well you pick up the rest, she said matter-of-factly.

Why can’t the rest be sent to a Lloyds closer to my home? Earlsdon or Allesley. But no, I have to go back. So, a 76-year-old, disabled man has to make a ten-mile round trip to the hospital, queue for the car park, which as we all know is pathetic, then wait again at the chemists counter for another 20 minutes then pay to get out of the car park and drive back again to Earlsdon.

All because they didn’t have enough of my medicine. Can you believe it? Why does a doctor’s or consultant’s prescription have to be dispensed at the hospital?

Why can’t we take the prescription to a chemist near our homes?

Surely it’s the same as getting one from your doctor.

Lloyds have all the wards medicine to look after and they obviously can’t cope with all the out-patient requests as well, so we wait 25 minutes. It truly is a ridiculous system.

But who oversees these types of organised chaos?

Surely someone in authority must look and realise it is not practical the way it’s run; or is it that they don’t care?

When I contacted the chief executive’s office they didn’t even know that the prescriptions had to be dispensed on site.

So I ask again: who is responsible for the set-up, Lloyds or the hospital? M Caine Earlsdon