"Absolutely Abysmal"

Dear Whiteley Resident,

Many thanks for taking your time to provide this feedback with frustrations of our current appointment services when contacting us to discuss your clinical concerns specific to HRT, and we are very sorry to read we have not met your expectations as our patient.

Regarding our booking methods for what is considered a routine GP appointment, we are working very hard to offer as many appointments as we can but we, like all GP surgeries nationally, do not have the clinical capacity to see everyone when they would like to be seen.

Last month (April) the Practice held over 17,600 consultations with 1 in 40 being missed, at an average of more than 100 appointments each week, totalling to over 110 hours of wasted clinical time, and over 4,200 of these were arranged through our daily GP-led triage process.

Included in this were over 1,000 routine GP appointments and over 9,100 face-to-face appointments were booked. This is in addition to all administrative clinical work (e.g., prescriptions, test results, requests from Hospitals and other patient queries).

We ask all patients to advise us if they are not able to attend an appointment as this allows us to offer that appointment to another patient but unfortunately this does not always happen.

It is also important to highlight our clinical staff can be required to work beyond recommended levels to meet demand, and we must consider their health and well-being, as well our patients.

While we understand this does not resolve your frustrations of being unable to book a routine appointment, we trust it reassures you of our routine bookings within our limited clinical capacity.

To reassure you of our booking systems, our 2023 appointment data shows this triage system increased access by more than 2,200 consultations, more than doubled face-to-face appointments, and increased routine access compared to the 2022 data.

As part of our ongoing commitment to improving our services, we introduced a new website with better digital access using an online consultation system called ‘anima’ in February ’24.

Please be aware while anima will improve online access for those who can use the internet, and also improve how to contact us for patients who cannot use the internet as telephone and in person contacts should become easier, anima is not increasing our clinical staffing.

If you wish for us to investigate any of your individual experiences and respond to you directly, please do get in contact with the surgery by any of the following methods:

1. Completing a formal Complaints Form, available from our surgery receptions.

2. By letter to: Complaints Team, Meon Health Practice, 102 Highlands Road, Fareham, PO15 6JF

3. By telephone - 01329 845 777

Thank you again for taking your time to share your feedback and we are sorry we have not met your expectations. We believe this will help us to deliver an improved service in future.

Kind regards,

James Leach

Patient Services Manager