Gran walked home in her nightie at 3am af ter hospital staff refused taxi
A VULNERABLE pensioner was forced to walk home from A&E in her nightclothes at 3am after the hospital refused to pay for a taxi.
Barbara Hazzard, 74, who suffers from arthritis in her feet, was eventually discovered wandering the streets by police officers who thought she had fled a nursing home.
The grandmother of six had been taken to St John’s Hospital in Livingston, West Lothian, on Friday night by ambulance after suffering a suspected heart attack.
She left home in only her night clothes, with no money or address book to get in touch with friends and family.
When Mrs Hazzard was discharged, in the early hours of Saturday, and explained that she had no one to collect her and no way to pay for a bus or taxi, hospital staff refused to help.
When the elderly lady told them she would have to make the fivemile journey home on foot in her slippers, no one stopped her walking out into the night alone.
An investigation has been launched by NHS Lothian and the health board’s acting chief executive has issued an apology.
Mrs Hazzard said: ‘God forbid it should happen to anyone else. It makes me afraid.
‘I spent most of the next day in bed thinking I could have been murdered – I was carrying a bag with drugs in it in my hand – I could have been attacked or knocked over by a car.’
Mrs Hazzard, who has type 2 diabetes and has had a double bypass and three stents inserted in her heart, lives in Blackburn, West Lothian, an hour and a half walk from the hospital.
She said: ‘After being checked over, I was sitting there in my nightie and my slippers with only my medical bag. That’s all I took
‘I could have been murdered’
to the hospital. No handbag, no money.
‘The staff kept saying I must have family I can call. I said my daughter was an in-patient herself and my grandson stays in Kinross. They replied, “we can’t do anything”.
‘I said in that case I’ll need to walk it back to Blackburn and they never batted an eyelid. I turned on my heels and walked out of the door.’
Not knowing which way to go Mrs Hazzard tried to retrace the route taken by her local bus service. She said she knew she would not be able to walk the whole way, and started panicking.
Knowing a bus was not due for another six hours, and with no money to buy a ticket, she walked to the main road in the hope of waving down a car.
Fortunately, a local taxi driver spotted her and called the police, who took her home at 4am.
Mrs Hazzard said: ‘They thought I’d escaped from a home. They couldn’t believe it when I said where I had come from.
‘My son is going mad about this. He said if the police hadn’t got me they would have been organising my funeral.’
Lothian MSP Neil Findlay said the incident was ‘beyond belief’.
He added: ‘I understand the pressures facing our NHS but discharging a 74-year-old woman with heart problems wearing nothing but her nightclothes is unacceptable.’
Jim Crombie, acting chief executive of NHS Lothian, said: ‘This was a distressing and upsetting episode for Mrs Hazzard and I would like to apologise to her. We are investigating to establish what happened.’