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Appointment

Story from nhs.uk

"Appointment"

About: The North Leeds Medical Practice

'Big is not always better'. Since this practice built a swish building, took on 21,000 patients with too few full time Drs the availability and method of gaining an appointment is often impossible, and little, even a pro-active patient can do for themselves, for the Dr's hold the power of the pen as the gateway to treatment. At 85 yrs of age I have risen at 6.30am twice this week, driven to the surgery for 7.30am to be first in a queue of other frustrated patients to get an appointment. Is this right? No I don't think so. I am fortunate to be able to do this , others of my age cannot./ Leadership, having a practice manager that stays the course and training are vital, but not at the patients expense by closing, once a month, an afternoon and late night surgery to do this, reducing, in my opinion appointment times even further. I believe training should be done at the surgery's expense on a Saturday.

Lack of access to a doctor for a patient is all seriously depressing, exhausting and sadly may lead to illness going undetected.

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Responses

Response from The North Leeds Medical Practice 8 months ago
The North Leeds Medical Practice

Submitted on 18/08/2023 at 14:45
Published on nhs.uk at 14:46

Dear Ms Jowett

We would like to thank you for bringing your concerns to us, as a practice we have reflected on your complaint, consultation, our performance and best practice triggers.

We understand from your comments that you are not happy with the service you have been receiving in relation to appointment bookings at North Leeds Medical Practice. We are sorry the service did not meet your expectation.

We can see that you are not happy with the appointment booking system we have in place at the practice. We would like to advise that we have a limited number of appointments for each day. Due to demand, we find the appointment slots are fully booked early in the day. This is the reason why we advise patients to call at 08:00. We do have urgent telephone consultation appointments which can be booked after 15:30 for anyone who feels they cannot wait until the next day, though again, we have a limited number of these appointments. Patients do not need to come into the surgery in person to book these appointments, however, we can understand why some patients do choose to attend in person in order to avoid the call queues.

We have a twelve GPs, seven nurses and 6 Healthcare assistance who work across both our sites. We can ensure that all our consultation rooms are booked at capacity to ensure we are able to see as many patients as possible.

There is a much higher demand for appointments at a national level compared to how it was in the past years. We would like to advise that this issue is not just local to our surgery, but it is a national issue.

As a result, we encourage patients to use the Patchs service on the practice website as an alternative for non-urgent issues. Patients can contact the surgery using this tool and should receive a response from a GP within 24 hours. If this is not suitable and your issue is more urgent; then it is advisable to either contact the NHS 111 service or visit the walk-in centre so that you can get the medical advice you require.

We note from your review, that you are not happy with the practice closing once a month for our Target training session. We are sorry that this closure causes you upset. However, we would like to advise that this closure for training is required by all practices in the Private Care Network. We are told to do this by the the West Yorkshire ICB.

We take all your comments on board, North Leeds Medical Practice is constantly working to improve our services.

Please accept our sincere apologies, once again, on behalf of the practice. We are sorry our service did not meet your expectation on this occasion.

We hope this response addresses the concerns raised in your review.

Yours sincerely

Rozma Ashraf

Patient Liaison Officer

North Leeds Medical Practice

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