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Care Opinion

Difficulties accessing this service

Posted By leomh57

"Difficulties accessing this service"

About: Glengormley Practice

(as a service user),

Our GP opens at 8.45am and at 8.45am they said their call backs were full. This has been going on for a week so I had to go into the GP. I haven’t been using the Doctor much, but this past week I haven’t been able to get through.

I have just go to the point where I’d given up and was not going to the Drs so today I went to the GP and I had to do this to get the appointment. I told the receptionist and she went into a room and then said I could have an appointment today at 3pm. It seems to me the service is not fit for my purposes for accessing the service and I am just wondering how I managed to the appointment by going in in-person, when they said their appointments were full.

I have gone out to other deaf members in the community and they have issues accessing appointments.  

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Responses

Response from Carol Andrews, Practice Manager, Glengormley Practice 9 months ago
Carol Andrews
Practice Manager,
Glengormley Practice

Submitted on 25/08/2023 at 09:57
Published on Care Opinion at 11:02

Thank you for feeding back on Care Opinion. Can I clarify about the message you heard at 8.45am. The "call backs are not full", the message states that the phones lines are full - reason for this is lots of patients are phoning at the same time and only a certain amount of calls can come through. Like all GP surgeries there is a limit on the number of available appointment slots each day and once they are full, the phone lines will give a different message stating "we have reached capacity", however, there remains an emergency service throughout the day for those in need.

Obviously when the patient called in person, the Care Navigator responded accordingly and booked an appointment. We are not asking our patients to call to the surgery, we are asking them to phone first but they will have to be patient. We are really happy to offer an alternative request service to our deaf patients if the telephone is not the best route for them. If you could drop me a note requesting this service either by calling into the surgery or by email to PracticeManager.Z00337@gp.hscni.net I am more than happy to set this up with you. Thank You

Carol

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