A family has shared their distressing experience with a local hospital prior to their elderly mother’s passing in the hopes others don’t go through a similar ordeal.
Joyce Allen, 90, was living in her Benalla home and was thriving in the town she had spent most of her life in.
The 90-year-old had a fall on 11 May last year and required an ambulance.
After a long wait, she was taken to the emergency department at Northeast Health Wangaratta.
Joyce’s daughter, Treena, who is based in Melbourne, said she and her sister were notified of the incident and her sister made plans to travel to Wangaratta the following day.
Latest Stories
Ms Allen said after her sister arrived the family had not received any update on her mother’s health or condition until two days later when she received a call from Benalla hospital.
Ms Allen said she was told her mother was in distress at the hospital in Benalla, having being transferred there without notification to any member of the family.
“There was no mention she was ever getting moved [from Wangaratta],” she said.
“I only got notified because she was distressed in Benalla hospital… that’s just not good enough.
“You can’t move a 90-year-old without telling her children and then we could’ve then worked through it and made sure one of us was there to make sure she got settled.
“It put my mum in such distress.”
The next day, Ms Allen said her mother had a heart attack and she passed away a week later.
Some months after the incident, Ms Allen said she made a formal complaint to Northeast Health Wangaratta and was alarmed with the hospital’s response.
A NHW employee had told her the error should not have occurred, and it had been “a problem that has been raised on a number of occasions by families”.
“The response was just disgusting,” Ms Allen said.
“It’s not good enough to our family and it’s not good enough to any other family.”
Ms Allen said she feared other families were being exposed to the bungled transfer of patients and wanted to speak out on her own experience.
A NHW spokesperson told this masthead the hospital had used the feedback to review their processes and strengthen their transfer system since the incident.
“NHW is always grateful to receive feedback from consumers as a way of helping us to improve our healthcare services,” they said.
