A seriously ill former Dundee fireman, who does not feel safe in Ninewells Hospital, is to meet Tayside health bosses next week.
Alasdair McLeay (65), who has motor neurone disease, was given the meeting date late after The Courier intervened on his behalf.
No one from the health authority had been in touch with him since his appalling story of a lack of care at Ninewells appeared in Saturday’s edition.
An NHS Tayside spokesman said last Friday that Mr McLeay and his wife Trudy would be contacted “as a matter of urgency.” Before The Courier intervened again on Tuesday, there had been no contact with the McLeays.
Mrs McLeay, a former radiographer at Ninewells, took early retirement to care for her husband who has to be fed through a tube in his stomach.
The disease affects his muscle control and he cannot speak, communicating through handwritten notes.
But after a catalogue of errors, Mrs McLeay felt forced to expose the lack of care on offer at Ninewells, saying she was ashamed to have been associated with NHS Tayside for 40 years.
Mr McLeay spent three weeks in Ninewells in July after losing over two stones in 13 days.
His wife was reduced to tears when a nurse called her in to the hospital suggesting her husband was dying, then laughed when she realised she had phoned the wrong relative about another patient.
Nurses frequently addressed Mr McLeay using an incorrect name but, even more seriously, dispatched samples for testing inappropriately labelled.
During his recent admission, Mr McLeay turned purple and began to shake uncontrollably while choking.
An attending doctor went to find a piece of equipment and never returned.
Mrs McLeay maintains he recovered thanks to a nurse, who phoned a specialist to ask how to treat a choking patient with motor neurone disease, and was advised to call in a physiotherapist as an emergency.
“At this point I knew that my husband was no longer safe in Ninewells and that I had to get him home,” said Mrs McLeay.
When The Courier contacted Mrs McLeay on Tuesday afternoon, she said she had not been contacted by NHS Tayside.
Shortly before the end of the working day, and after The Courier contacted NHS Tayside pointing out nobody from the organisation had been in touch with the McLeays, they were given a date next week when Gerry Marr, NHS Tayside’s chief operating officer and Gillian Costello, associate director of nursing, will visit the McLeays at home to discuss their concerns. The health chiefs have allocated two and a half hours for the visit.