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Sorry, please try again tomorrow!

Story from nhs.uk

"Sorry, please try again tomorrow!"

About: Larwood Surgery

Over the past 2 years my husband and I have had to contact the surgery for menopause issues (migraines), hip issues (significant arthritis), ongoing cough shortness of breath (asthma) and unexplained internal pain (?). When we finally get hold of clinicians our issues have been dealt with appropriately and we are extremely grateful for this.

However, we both work full time and have been left frustrated, tearful, anxious and angry as we have been repeatedly fobbed off - either by the system which we have to race at 8am to try and get our issues listed before it becomes 'full', by admin who advise that our query is not urgent and that we must try to race the system again tomorrow at 8am and retype and resubmit, by admin who advise that we were too late in submitting our request (although it went through at 8.10am), by Doctors who call back and offer us an appointment but if we can't immediately down tools and race back same day advise us to race the system again and resubmit the request tomorrow, by admin who advise that we chose the wrong route via which to submit our request so we must race the system again and resubmit via a different route. In two years I am not exaggerating when I write that between us we must have been fobbed off with the above excuses at least 30-40 times - when we only really ever needed 4 appointments in total. I am currently suffering from migraines due to the menopause but the stress of simply trying to reach someone to chat

about this causes yet more headache. My husband has an unexplained pain and has been passed from pillar to post so much so that he is now extremely concerned and depressed. We are good hardworking people. We have rarely used the Doctors over the years but now we need them we just can't reach them. We feel like we ought to go private but can't afford it. In our opinion this surgery should be placed in special measures until it can serve it's community appropriately and not try to entice us all into a gazumping race every time we want to chat to a GP.

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Responses

Response from Larwood Surgery last month
Larwood Surgery

Submitted on 15/03/2024 at 18:03
Published on nhs.uk at 18:04

Dear Patient

We are extremely sorry to hear of the difficulties and frustrations you have faced when trying to obtain an appointment. General practice nationally is under immense strain due to a chronic shortage of GPs, which has proved a great challenge for general practice, with many of our staff sharing those very same frustrations of not having enough appointments for our patients. We are, however, constantly striving to overcome those challenges to help improve access for our patients. Some recent examples of changes we have made are:

We now have Musculo-Skeletal Practitioners working at the Practice, who see patients with Musculo-skeletal problems without the need to see a GP. In the next few months one of the members of this team will also be able to prescribe pain medication, further releasing GP appointments

We have increased our Clinical Practitioner Team so that they can deal with more on the day demand, allowing the GPs to focus on continuity of care for our patients, which has always been at the heart of general practice

We have employed an Admiral Nurse (specialist dementia nurse) to support families with the many complex challenges that the condition brings

In February we had 2 more GPs join our Practice Team

Our Reception and Administration Teams have had Care Navigation Training to try to ensure they direct the patient to the right person or service first time

We introduced something called ‘Patient Partner’ which allows patients to book some appointments via telephone without the need to speak to a receptionist, which means many more patients are getting through to the Surgery without such a long wait on the phone

We have an inhouse team of Clinical Pharmacists who work hard to improve efficient and safe prescribing. This team are responsible for conducting annual medication reviews for patients and, again, help free up appointments for GPs.

The Practice has embraced the Government’s new initiative of “Pharmacy First” which allows our reception team to offer consultations for a range of problems at local community pharmacies in and around Bassetlaw

We are starting to feel the benefits of these and hope this is enhanced when we welcome a further GP to our team next month.

In addition we will also increase the amount of pre-bookable appointments, that can be booked either once the surgery opens at 08:00am or can be booked on-line (via SystmOnLine or the NHS App) from midnight.

As a Practice we will continue to embrace changes in this difficult time that general practice is facing in our pursuit to deliver the high class service we strive for, and which our patients, staff and community deserve.

Please feel free to contact me for any further feedback/help or advice. Thank you, Carrie-Team Leader

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