NUH - Hospital of Choice?

OK I know I was a pioneer of the hospital ( Employee #2; I even kept the badge after I quit) but having admitted my mum there three times over the last 4 months I think the hospital has somehow "matured" into something very different from what we planned it to be 25 years ago. The systems really need to be looked at. I'm talking about both the nursing and non-nursing aspects of running the hospital. The waiting outside the A&E is something that has to be addressed. Family members wait outside the A&E while the patient is attended to inside. The Hospital does not allow anyone to accompany the patient unless the patient is a child then one person can accompany the patient into the A&E. So the family waits outside sometimes for hours, not knowing what's happening to the patient inside. The waiting area is a sham. A row of uncomfortable plastic chairs line the walls outside the A&E. After the doctor decides that the patient needs to be warded it takes hours for the patient to be wheeled up to the ward.
Nowadays the patient's medical record is accessible no matter which hospital he is warded in. Thats all very nice however its based on the last hospital visit so if the person was last warded 2 years ago he wil be treated as of the last record. Let me explain. Based on my mother's medical record she was warded last year for a stroke so she was put on a low salt blended diet so thats what she was given wen she was first admitted. We had to tell them to take her off that diet because that was one year ago and she has since gone back to a normal diet.
My aunt was warded 2 weeks ago. She had neurosurgery done and was in the high dependency ward. After 5 days the doctor said she could be transferred to the general ward however there were no single rooms aailable in the general wards so she had to remain in Ward 25. I called a few days later to find out if she had been moved. The person who took my call asked me for her identity card number which I obviously did not have so I gave her my aunt's full name both married and maiden name. After a few minutes , she came back on the line and asked me for my aunt's address because there were several patients with the same name. I doubt this very much because my aunt does not have a very common chinese name ( Irene Wee Hee Niong - well , you decideif that's a common name ) . Anyway after giving her my aunt's address she was still not able to trace my aunt and said that there was no such patient; this was inspite of me giving her my aunt's ward and room number ( Ward 25, Room 4 ). As it turned out my aunt was still in that ward and room!!
I am lucky that I still have friends who work at NUH so I have the luxury of calling them whenever I hit a brickwall with the system or if I want to go around the system. What about all the rest of the majority of patients who don;t have any strings to pull at NUH? They are at the mercy of a system that is full of faults. These are only a couple of examples of "breakdowns" in the system which I encountered; there are so many more which would take many more pages if I was to write them all down......the horrific parking situation, the terrible location for the foodcourt at the Kent Ridge Wing, the rude nurses etc
BUT we did encounter some exceptional nurses like Anne in Ward 76 and Zoo in Ward 78; Assistant Directors ( Nursing ) Mabel and Mona and Doctors Koh and Sun and some wonderful cleaners like Joyce ( Ward 76) . SO will I go back to NUH ? probably; only because I know people there and its the closest hospital to us . Would I recommend it to someone else ? Probably not.