"„ no words for such a bad service „"

Dear Daniel,

I’m sorry that you feel like you have received poor service from the surgery.

Firstly, our staff do not give out test results unless it states clearly that it does not require any action. If the results are something that needs to be discussed with a clinician, our staff will say your results needs to be discussed in an appointment.

Due to being overwhelmed, we turn off the eConsult function and there is not a set time when it goes off. However, patients are still able to call the surgery and get an appointment on the same day if they believe it’s urgent.

We have hired extra staff to deal with the extra workload that the surgery is facing. The last few years have been very challenging for staff, and we understand it’s been challenging for patients too. We are committed at Torrington to offering the best service possible. As one of the manager’s, I am always available to talk to unhappy patients or patients are free to email the surgery to address their concerns.

Our preferred method of communication is via eConsult. It helps clinicians with triaging patient queries and signposting them to the right service. It also brings down the queuing time on the phone so that patients who need to contact us urgently can do so. We understand that some patients are unable to do eConsults for various reasons. We have always helped this cohort of patients by doing eConsults on their behalf.

Most GP surgeries since COVID have asked patients to send prescriptions via email. This is a way of having an audit trail between the surgery, the patient, or the chemist. This is also a great way for us to see if there are any issues with prescriptions we can identify, such as prescriptions coming in too late from the chemist. We also do understand some patients may need their medication more urgently, so we will then assist them with ordering their medication.

Medical reports often contain information about patients. As a surgery, we must make sure that the patient consents to us disclosing their information. Some medical reports do not fall under the scope of non-NHS work, and we do it as additional work. Therefore, the turnaround time can sometimes be slightly longer than a patient would ideally like it to be.

If there’s any more problems, feel free to call the surgery and ask to speak to one of the managers. Alternatively,, please enquire about joining the PPG meetings. This will allow you have an open forum to discuss any issues that you may have.