Arthritis diary Door-to-door service Has time been called on poor drug delivery firms, asks BBC presenter Julian Worricker A There seemed to be a bewildering lack of communication between those who were promising me delivery times and those who were driving the vans t the end of my last column, I mentioned the delivery companies that many of us rely on to bring arthritis drugs to our front doors. I wondered what experiences you had had with them, because mine were none too clever at the time. There have been developments since. After a series of frustrating episodes when delivery of my Humira drug was promised, but thendidnt materialise I decided to try to get some answers from the company responsible. When I first started using Humira, in 2013, my experiences of the delivery company were positive. Id receive a phone call to arrange delivery, wed agree whether it would be morning or afternoon, and then narrow down the delivery window to two hours on the day. By and large, they stuck to it, and when matters beyond their control intervened theyd let me know. Fine. However, as 2014 went on, things began to go wrong. The pre-delivery phone call still happened but, increasingly, the pledge about a two-hour window became meaningless. If I tried to contact the company, it was well-nigh impossible to get through. The morning of a designated delivery day became the start of a long, frustrating process, comprising broken promises and the chance to listen to a lot of indigestible on hold music. on the road A bit of digging offered some context. Last June, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism published an article highlighting some of the issues I was encountering. It cited the outcome of inspection work by the Care Quality Commission, which talked of a proportion of patients not receiving their medicines on time, and of the companys customer service team being overwhelmed by telephone enquiries from patients. On the companys website, there is an acknowledgement of some of those difficulties. It refers to a transfer of its logistics and deliveries to a specialist provider a transition that has been painful and has caused problems, but which will mean a stronger, more flexible and more patient-centric homecare service in the long term. In November, I endured three days of uncertainty over a Humira delivery. To be fair to the delivery company, it was now much easier to get through on the phone, but there seemed to be a bewildering lack of communication between those who in good faith were promising me delivery times, and those who, presumably also in good faith, were driving the vans. to recovery So I wrote to the customer complaints department and to my MP, and I received prompt replies. The latter did the nudging, while the former offered me a sincere apology and told me as its website does that the company has embarked on a programme of service recovery across the business. Interestingly, my most recent Humira delivery was due last Monday. I was told it would arrive in the morning, and when I rang to narrowdown the time I was told it would arrive at about 11.25am. It arrived at 11.22am. Was this a one off, or are the drugs delivery companies finally getting their act together? Watch this space! "