Poor service from Yellow Card office

Recently those who obtain medicine through the pink card system were asked to go to the Schedule 5 office at St Luke’s Hospital to have the medicine listed on the pink card added to the yellow card. Obviously, those attending would also have had to go back to their consultant to obtain new forms to enable this to take place.

However, the experience at the Schedule 5 office is hardly fit for humans, let alone for the sick, old and infirm people who need this service.

People were initially made to queue in one room, although there was hardly any space or seats to accommodate the 200-odd people present (this number is confirmed by the number of tickets issued).

After first obtaining their number, a substantial number of people were made to stand outside since there was no room for them in the office.

One is eventually called into another room which has 12 seats and from this point one has to wait another half-an-hour to be attended to.

I arrived at 8 a.m. and including the few minutes it took to be attended to in the two service booths by the two very courteous young ladies on duty,I had to wait for more than three hours just for a few minutes’ attention.

To make matters worse, there are no toilet facilities in this building and when one needs to use such facilities, one is directed to the filthy, smelly toilets in the square opposite the hospital gates.

This is a totally deplorable situation that is not allowed in any public building let alone one that is linked to medical facilities used by people with poor immune systems who require a very good level of hygiene.

I am sure the relevant authorities think that this standard of service is acceptable or perhaps they do not know any better, as otherwise a more customer-oriented system would be in place.

Furthermore, this office opens only on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings and it is patently clear this is not sufficient, given the number of people using the service.

It is also evident the mentality is that since you are being given this for free, you should not complain, forget-ting that some of us have spent our entire working lives paying good money in taxes and national insurance for this service and in some cases are still doing so.