Related Articles
More woe for Royal Mail
By Lesley Walsh
A RETIRED couple who both live with heart conditions have spoken out about missed hospital appointments and running out of vital medication due to mail delivery delays.
Mervyn and Jean Wright, from Newtownards, who are both in their seventies, have revealed their prescriptions have been left sitting in their local sorting office, undelivered, which local managers have said is due to staffing shortages.
It is the latest criticism of the Royal Mail in Newtownards and comes after other residents in the town have also complained of missing hospital appointments and having to visit the sorting office themselves to collect their mail.
Mr Wright, a great grandfather of two, said the delays have been causing problems for him in accessing his medication for approximately the past four months.
Explaining that his prescriptions are routinely mailed by his GP from a practice in Belfast, Mr Wright said the unreliable postal service has left him without medicine at a time when he had just spent five days in hospital for his condition.
Mr Wright said that during the recent delays in receiving his prescriptions, he has contacted his doctor to query their whereabouts only to find out that the prescriptions had been posted to him but not delivered on time before his medication has run out.
The pensioner revealed that the delays also led to him missing a hospital appointment.
“I had an appointment in early June, at the Ulster, which I didn’t go to because I didn’t know about it. The next thing I knew I got a letter saying ‘you missed your appointment’,” he said.
“At the Ulster,they said they have heard of a lot of missed appointments, as far away as Ballygowan, most of the BT23 area.”
Mr Wright said during his recent five-day stay in hospital a doctor remarked that he had an upcoming appointment, but that was the first Mr Wright knew about it.
The appointment was for the Royal Victoria Hospital and when Mr Wright telephoned on July 24 he was told the notification had been sent out on July 16. “Nine days later and I still hadn’t got it,” he said.
The issue prompted Mr Wright to go to the Post Office personally.
“I went down to the Post Office behind the town hall and I spoke to a man about it who said it’s all down to staff sickness.”
He said however, that the staff member he spoke to maintained that important documents like hospital appointments were divided from the bulk of post, to ensure their prompt delivery.
“But it’s just not happening, for me anyway,” he said.
Mr Wright said his major concern lay with the threat of being removed from medical waiting lists, should people he continue to miss appointments.
“Once a person misses an appointment, they are removed from that waiting list and you don’t know whether you are put back on the list in the same place or whether you have to be right down to the bottom again,” he said.
He said such a situation presented wider implications for the entire health service.
“When you’re missing your appointments, that has an impact on all the NHS waiting lists,” he said. “If this is happening to me, I’m sure there are others out there like me.”
His wife Jean, who also depends on heart medication, confirmed that the post is wholly unreliable. “If it comes at all, it comes at as late as 5pm,” she said.
