A relative (82 yrs old) is being treated at the Walton Centre Liverpool, but has not seen or been contacted by anyone there since before lockdown. Wondered if anyone else having issues?
Family have had to take them to local A&E in the small hours on a couple of occasions, but when they try to ask questions regarding changes to their condition things happen like the Parkinson’s Nurse phoning once, leaving a message then never getting back. GP is pretty unresponsive only.
Understand the issues caused by C-19, but family are feeling cast adrift, given severity of some of the issues since Feb.
Someone recommended asking to be transferred to Southport Hospital (who use Walton Centre consultants) as they found they got referred to consultants in other fields (eg. ENT) quicker there?
Thanks
Hi @jayjay
Welcome to the forum, I am sure many will reply, however in the meantime may I suggest you contact our helpline on 0808 0800 0303 or email [email protected] as they will be able to put you in touch with your local adviser who in turn will be able to help you contact your nurse and/or offer some local experience.
I hope this helps
Regards
Sue - Moderation team
Hi Sue - thanks for the personal reply, we’ll do that. A difficult time at the moment for all of us as never sure what delays are Covid-19 related and which due to possibly some admin error etc.
Hi JayJay,
I’ve been transferred to Walton from the Wirral and it has been a mare! Had one iPad consultation in 6 months, even though my condition is getting worse with lots of falls…
No idea if the issue is a lack of staff/resources or whether the PD dept is just badly run, but my families experience has been extremely poor. It was difficult enough prior to covid but the situation is now even worse with the impression they have effectively pulled up the drawbridge.
My 83 year old mother is now in care due to her mobility issues and has been suffering terrible leg and stomach pain for many months. When we contacted the Walton centre we were told it would be a seven week wait for a telephone consultation with the PD nurse. We contacted her GP to see if he could speak with the Walton centre to get things speeded up. When he contacted them he was told mum was lucky to get any appointment at the moment and nothing could be done to speed things up. He was told this by the consultants secretary! Who I’m sure is a very nice person but hardly qualified to be triaging.
When the telephone consultation finally happened it was short and sweet and ended with no intention of any further assessment or review of medication.
Mums care home contacted the Walton centre and they agreed to prescribe pain patches. Eight days later and the GP had still not received the authorisation from the Walton centre. When I spoke with the WC secretary she said she was still typing up stuff from 7 days ago but would get it done that day and post it out. I was flabbergasted, 2020 and important stuff like this was still being processed via snail mail. I asked her to fax it to the surgery instead, which she did.
Sorry for the rant, but my mum is just one of many people around the country who are being left to suffer because of an under-funded, over capacity, dysfunctional service, operated by people who I truly believe care but have probably been told to make do and mend.
Hi I had not heard from my specialist in over a year. He called me 2 days ago. I have had a really bad year with PD and when in February I called the pd nurse for help as I had no quality of life she was no help at all. I was under the Walton Centre
I was admitted to hospital a day later after ending up in a and e. There I met a doctor from St Helens Hospital and he and the team there have been fantastic. The doctors are Dr Mason and Dr Williams.
Call and ask their Secretary Diane Wilson if you can go over to their team. Wishing you well
This makes me so angry. Where is their empathy?
I thought I was the only one that had suffered the appalling treatment from the so called specialists!
I intend to make a full complaint about the care I have not received