Staying in hospital

is not fun and it turns out we could have had the Senior Cat home last week.
I did not see the Senior Cat  yesterday. I intended to but Middle Cat had to take her husband to another hospital for some minor surgery.  As always things were running late and she went off to see the Senior Cat without picking me up. 
The reason for this was that she wanted to be there in time to go with him for his appointment with the podiatry specialist. It was this appointment that was his reason for staying in until today.
It didn't happen. 
The ward staff knew nothing about it. They could find no record of it. The podiatry department knew nothing about it. They could find no record of it. Was it in Outpatients? No. They knew nothing about it.
Middle Cat  phoned me to let me know all this. She was, rightly, very annoyed. As she said to me, "I couldn't get angry with the ward staff. It isn't their fault."
I suspect I know where the fault lies. It would be in podiatry where someone was distracted before putting the appointment in - and then simply forgetting.
When I could not get there on Sunday I tried phoning. The ward phone was eventually answered after a long wait. Instead of asking to speak to the Senior Cat I just said,
    "I'm sorry to bother you. Could you just give my father a very short message instead of taking the phone to him?"
The response was, "Of course. I'll let him know straight away."
This meant peace of mind for the Senior Cat and less work for the person on shift. Of course there are people who take their mobile phones into hospital with them but the Senior Cat, while he can use his, is not confident about it and was worried he might lose it.  
But I do wish that, within the hospital, there were better lines of communication. The Senior Cat's appointment was not life threatening but it was important. Now it will mean Middle Cat has to get him to and from the hospital. If she can't do it then I will have to get an Access Cab both ways and, given their unreliability, it could be an all day affair. Seeing him while he was in hospital was simply a matter of getting him to and from the relevant department.
This is the sort of thing that happens all the time of course. Nobody seems to take the lack of good communication lines very seriously. They should. It could save a great deal of time and trouble.
It could also save lives.