"I cannot stress enough that this review is not about the quality of care provided. Every time I have seen a GP they have been brilliant and they are of the best standard I've known at any GP practice.
What is absolutely infuriating with this practice and will, I expect, ultimately lead to me finding an alternative is the ludicrous manner in which appointments are allocated.
You'd think that the concept of phoning at 8am and getting an appointment the same day is brilliant right? No waiting over a week to see a GP like some practices...
Well surprisingly you'd be wrong. There is a fundamental flaw in this approach to providing primary care services. There needs to actually be sufficient capacity to manage the demand from patients. I have lost count of the times I have tried (note the tried) to phone from 8am, sitting obsessively hitting redial as the line is so overloaded that you can't even get into the call queue but instead just get an engaged tone. When you eventually manage to get through all the appointments are gone and an unapologetic receptionist tells you that your only option is to repeat the whole fiasco again the following morning with no guarantee of success as they can't book you an appointment for the following day.
Whilst for many this arrangement is just frustrating and a poor patient experience, I worry about those patients whose conditions may deteriorate significantly through lack of accessible care. Conversely there will be those for whom the frustration is just too much and because they can't see a GP will instead turn up at A&E, overloading an already broken service and potentially risking lives of patients who are at A&E for a genuine Emergency but aren't seen quickly enough as the hospital is worried about failing to hit its targets of treating people within a specific window of time.
I appreciate that there are finite resources and increasing demand for services. However, if the system you've got in place at the moment isn't working then simply ignoring the problem won't make it go away. Perhaps it's time to look at a blended approach, allowing some appointments to be 'future booked' for those who need to give work some forewarning and/or whose need isn't 'acute', for example the medication review someone else has commented on.
Lastly and it seems a small thing, it is frustrating when you've sat on a phone for 30 mins and then get told there are no appointments. And I can appreciate that not everyone is particularly pleasant when they get told this. But the indifferent attitude shown by some of the reception staff when imparting this news is frankly shocking. A little bit of empathy or even just an acknowledgment of someones upset would go a long way towards decreasing frustration and isn't all that hard to do."
–Clair, 7th March 2019
What is absolutely infuriating with this practice and will, I expect, ultimately lead to me finding an alternative is the ludicrous manner in which appointments are allocated.
You'd think that the concept of phoning at 8am and getting an appointment the same day is brilliant right? No waiting over a week to see a GP like some practices...
Well surprisingly you'd be wrong. There is a fundamental flaw in this approach to providing primary care services. There needs to actually be sufficient capacity to manage the demand from patients. I have lost count of the times I have tried (note the tried) to phone from 8am, sitting obsessively hitting redial as the line is so overloaded that you can't even get into the call queue but instead just get an engaged tone. When you eventually manage to get through all the appointments are gone and an unapologetic receptionist tells you that your only option is to repeat the whole fiasco again the following morning with no guarantee of success as they can't book you an appointment for the following day.
Whilst for many this arrangement is just frustrating and a poor patient experience, I worry about those patients whose conditions may deteriorate significantly through lack of accessible care. Conversely there will be those for whom the frustration is just too much and because they can't see a GP will instead turn up at A&E, overloading an already broken service and potentially risking lives of patients who are at A&E for a genuine Emergency but aren't seen quickly enough as the hospital is worried about failing to hit its targets of treating people within a specific window of time.
I appreciate that there are finite resources and increasing demand for services. However, if the system you've got in place at the moment isn't working then simply ignoring the problem won't make it go away. Perhaps it's time to look at a blended approach, allowing some appointments to be 'future booked' for those who need to give work some forewarning and/or whose need isn't 'acute', for example the medication review someone else has commented on.
Lastly and it seems a small thing, it is frustrating when you've sat on a phone for 30 mins and then get told there are no appointments. And I can appreciate that not everyone is particularly pleasant when they get told this. But the indifferent attitude shown by some of the reception staff when imparting this news is frankly shocking. A little bit of empathy or even just an acknowledgment of someones upset would go a long way towards decreasing frustration and isn't all that hard to do."
–Clair, 7th March 2019
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