Alfred Health

I was in hospital for 5 days and the staff were amazing from the tea lady to the doctors, all were kind, friendly and professional; they made what would normally be a horrid health experience as pleasant as possible under the circumstances. Hospital is not the most greatest time to have but Sandringham Alfred helped to make it far more bearable. Thank you Sandringham

Found everyone I spoke to helpful and friendly. I love the parking with the lifts from parking directly inside the hospital. Great to be able to get park discounts, too. I had very little waiting time to see doctors, very good as I had a 3-4 hr return drive home.

You could not make this up!!! – Arrived at ED by ambulance, in the afternoon in severe pain Was seated in a very small crowded waiting room, requested pain killer several times to no avail. At six pm after being refused again, I said if you won’t assist, I have pain killers at home; walked out and caught a taxi home, sat up all night and returned to the hospital next morning,… Read more

and was admitted for almost a week. As for the food, I could not believe the waste. patients including myself just looked at it and pushed it away. A lot of patients used Uber Eats. The second half of my complaint is serious on another level. Almost five months ago I was contacted by a medical clinic completely unknown to me. They advised that they had received a fax from the Alfred which included my medical records. I contacted the hospital and asked why this happened, they denied it many times, despite the fact that the clinic had the documentation. This breach of privacy was unacceptable, I reported it to the Ombudsman, they brushed me off, forwarded me to the Health Complaints commission (5 months later not even a reply) the Health Commissioner also brushed me off and referred me to another department; Not their problem, local member has been similarly unhelpful, even the PM’s office was not interested in assisting, the least he could have done is to get the appropriate department to get off their a@ses, when he is home of course. The bottom line of course, why is the Alfred lying??? So there are the deserved reasons for a negative review. Apart from that I have nothing but praise for the care and attention of the nursing staff.

Inconsistent wait times in emergency department – I 'get it' that state governments love to either run inefficient public hospitals, or fail to provide sufficient funding for expected busy times. I also understand to some degree that demand varies and may do so in a way that's not quite expected. But when one presents in the 'small hours' (say 0200 hours) and there's either no one else or… Read more

hardly anyone waiting in the public area, unless they are dealing with say a road trauma patient it's concerning that the staff force you to wait a couple of hours or occasionally even longer.

I rarely use public hospitals but the inability of staff to inform when one is likely to be seen is annoying. Typical public sector attitude.

Incompetent Administration Staff – Well over a year ago, I downloaded the forms for pre-admission to free bariatric surgery through the public system. After completing the forms, I had them sent to the email address given by the clinic through my GP (and one form sent by the Northern Hospital to expedite my application). Even though all the forms had been filled correctly, I kept… Read more

getting replies from the clinic stating that the forms were not filled or had missing information. This was not true but my GP reviewed the forms and we filled them out again another three or four times with the same responses. Eventually I began to receive mail from the clinic outlining four steps I needed to follow before being accepted for admission. I was on to step three but no longer received anymore correspondence after that. I'd called them twice to find out what was going on. Appearantly they had trouble finding my applications and when they did find it they said they will send out more mail. After several months I received a mail stating that I had pulled out of the waiting list despite the fact that I did no such thing. I called about this and they said they'll fix it and that I should expect some follow-up mail. Again no mail. I've given up on these guys and wonder if my very foreign sounding name might have contributed to their purposeful ignorance of my application. I have since put on more weight and developed type II diabetes. I've had to purchase Gold Level Hospital Insurance in order to get the surgery after one year. Something I couldn't really afford to do being unemployed through the COVID pandemic. When I do get my surgery it won't be performed at the Alfred hospital.