"No communication informing me of cancellation"

My son was given an outpatients appointment recently. We had been waiting over 3 months for an appointment, so were keen to attend and altered plans accordingly. 

We arrived 10 minutes early and booked in with reception and were asked to wait. 20 minutes later a nurse came to speak to us to inform us that the clinician was actually off sick, and had been all week. Apparently we were the only patients not to be contacted to inform us that the appointment was cancelled!

Our journey to reach the hospital takes 90 minutes (without traffic), so we spent a total of 4 hours travelling to an appointment that did not exist.

I received absolutely no communication whatsoever informing me that the appointment was cancelled. No phone call, no letter, no email.

The incompetence is beyond belief....and there have been a series of problems we have encountered since first being referred.

On attending our first appointment we had to wait 2 hours 40 minutes later than our scheduled time to see the clinician. My son needed an MRI scan, which we agreed could be done a The Borders General Hospital to save our 90 minute journey. However, after a month of waiting we had still not received anything. My son's GP knew nothing about it either. To hopefully speed up the process I contacted the clinician's secretary to discuss moving the MRI to Edinburgh Children's hospital to speed up the process. I ended up having to phone weekly to see if an appointment had been made! Surely this is not a difficult request, especially if the patient is willing to travel such a distance to make things easier for NHS Lothian. 

When the MRI was finally arranged it went without a problem - so thank you to the MRI team.

That, however, led to the follow up appointment that I am writing about now.

In all of this debacle is a teenage boy who is suffering pain preventing him from doing the activities he wishes to do.

I look forward to your prompt response to this matter.