I think it's about the fragmentation of health care. Back in the good? bad? old days, it was the Consultants who ruled, and everybody did their bidding. But healthcare has moved on since, and some of that has been very good for patients, but sometimes it results in a lack of joined-up communication, which results in patients being in limbo.
I was in a similar situation last year, having been admitted via A&E on a Thursday evening. I was still there on Sunday evening, having received no treatment (cauterisation of nose-bleed) despite promises of treatment for the Friday, Saturday, Sunday morning, and then the Monday morning. I said to the (lovely) SHO on Sunday evening that I would go home and come back the next day. I was told I couldn't leave without treatment (fair enough, an untreated but temporarily controlled epistaxis is potentially dangerous); but I said there is no "couldn't leave", there was only "patient consent", so he couldn't stop me. I was then treated with cauterisation within half an hour.
The issue there was that there wasn't enough cover. The Consultant was having to cover a huge area, with little back-up, and the priority for him had to be the target for A&E patients. As I had already been admitted, I was no longer one of those targets, so I kept being pushed to the back of the queue. When I eventually went into the treatment room, I passed all the people who had come up from A&E, sitting in the waiting area, and they were all looking bored.
But I had been well looked-after by the nurses on a ward for three whole days, been fed for three whole days - but at what unnecessary expense?