Sunday 24 of August, 2025
The problem today everywhere seems to be the lack of communication. I've FINALLY recieved my medical notes from Wolverhampton, or at least some of them. Since 'Practice Plus' is a different part of the NHS, only the letters set to the hospital arm are included, and the one thing I was trying to get records of, the ultrasound of my knee, which I thought the hospital carried out, was missing. There is no link to a data access request visible on the Practice Plus website, so I have had to send a message using the teatment request page. Lets see how long they take to respond. Wolverhampton's 30 day legal requirement ended back in early May and it was only after poking a week back that a 'secure email' arrived with a disjointed set of scans of paper copies of material which IS available as electronic files. It is useful to finally see the report into my initial echocardiogram even if I can't understand what it says, and now I need to establish if currently my heart is better or worse than it was in 2021.
It's not just the NHS lack of communication. Having finally had a shower head restored to the bathroom three weeks back, it was only today that I discovered that the new cold tap isn't ... It turns out that the right hand tap is ACTUALLY just a temperature control, so I can just leave it set and use the left hand one to switch the water on and off. If the paperwork for the new tap had been left I probably would have found that out, but the plumbers who fitted it could perhaps have given me some information? I'm still fighting to get at the shower head as it's too high up, but having now added an anti-slip mat to the bath at least it's a bit safer to reach it down. I will add an adjustable bar on the side of the bath as I had in my previous home, but the one I currently have from the shower head that plugged onto the old taps is the wrong size for the new shower head, so need to buy a another one into which the shower head will fit safely.
We have also passed the one month mark on my request to add flooring to the loft area to make that safer to use. The original confirmation letter stated I would get a replay "withing 8 working days of the submission", and that has long gone. Attempts to find out just who I need to talk to have been made each week without the requested callbacks, so time perhaps for yet another complaint form? That process would not be necessary if it ACTUALLY got the original problems fixed, and the concentration by the ombudsmen processes on "having completed the complains process" before contacting them just adds to a useless process in the first case.