Complaint over ‘urgent’ response

Colin Stannett, from Eglinton, whose wife Jean suffers from Cushing’s syndrome, said she fell ill at approximately 10am on Saturday, February 11.

He told the Sentinel she regularly suffers from such episodes but that they normally last less than 15 minutes. But on this occasion the coughing continued and Mr Stannett decided to call Western Urgent Care (WUC), which provides the GP OOH service in the North West.

He said: “She was in it for a good quarter-of-an-hour. Naturally enough I started to panic and phoned the OOH or as they call it now Urgent Care. They took all my details and said ‘we’ll get back to you.’

“I sat in the house for a good hour, hour-and-a-quarter and they got back to me through a nurse practitioner.

“I said, ‘she’s out of it now.’ ‘Oh, so she doesn’t need any assistance then,’ was the response. End of conversation.

“But for a thing advertising itself as Urgent Care, with emphasis on the word ‘urgent,’ I would have expected a better response than what I got.”

The concerned husband added: “My main complaint is, if they are advertising ‘urgent’ care, then I would expect a quicker response from them, not an hour or hour-and-a-quarter later. ‘God forgive me for saying it, by that time she could have been dead.”

A spokesman for WUC told the Sentinel it was unable to comment on individual cases for patient confidentiality reasons.

He said WUC encourages patients to avail of its complaints process if they have any concerns.