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Absolutely atrocious service

Story from nhs.uk

"Absolutely atrocious service "

About: Nuffield Road Medical Centre

Awful surgery. Impossible to see a doctor, for an adult’s ongoing problem or for a 15 month baby.

The wait on the phone to even speak to anyone is so long, when you finally get through there are apparently no appointments for that day. The women who answer the phones are incredibly unhelpful and un-empathetic. Do not display any understanding in difficult situations - their responses are robotic and routine.

Once you finally get an appointment, the doctor’s are so behind schedule you can be waiting for up to an hour for your 10 minutes slot.

Other surgeries I have been to have an online system which responded within a few hours. This surgery’s online system seems to never respond, for an urgent matter or non-urgent.

I live 5 minutes down the road and was told this morning to go to A&E at Addenbrooks because they have no more appointments for the day. It’s 9:30am and I’d been on hold since 8:50am.

Instead of wasting admin’s time of displaying lots of posters about supporting your own mental health, sort this mess out and have more staff answering phone calls which have been trained to answer in an understanding manner, especially when it has anything to do with toddlers!

Initially, I transferred to this surgery as it was bigger than my last (and presumably employed more doctors so would have more appointments?!)… when I transfered and filled all the forms out, stating my repeat prescriptions.. none of them were logged and the receptionist said I would have to see a doctor to reinstate them all. But they didn’t have any appointments for a month!

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Responses

Response from Nuffield Road Medical Centre last week
Nuffield Road Medical Centre

Submitted on 10/05/2024 at 10:16
Published on nhs.uk at 10:16

Thank you for taking the time to provide your feedback.

We are sorry to learn of your experience when you registered at our surgery and your repeat medications, and your recent experience to get an appointment. I have outlined below the steps that we have / will take as a result of your feedback.

Regarding your new registration, all patients with repeat medications do need to see a clinician for a medication review before a clinician will issue the prescription. This is for patient safety and for the clinician to understand your medical requirements as you are not known to the clinician at the point you register at the practice. This is done with your care and safety in mind. Your feedback has highlighted the need for us to ensure we do our best to notify new patients who inform us of their repeat medications that they will need a review before further prescriptions are issued.

I can understand your frustration regarding the waiting time whilst at the surgery for your appointment, and I have reminded all our clinicians to inform the support team if they are running late during their clinic. This will enable our support team to advise patients.

We do understand your frustration about booking an appointment. The team work incredibly hard to provide a professional service to all our patients, and they do this at a very difficult time for the NHS. Unfortunately across England, there are not enough GPs to meet patient demand – GPs are delivering more appointments than ever before despite the workforce depleting year on year. And the government is doing nothing to retain the GPs who are leaving the profession in droves due to an unsustainable workload.

Our surgery does feel the impact of this situation, and the team work carefully to prioritise appointment requests daily.

If you would like me to look in to this further, please do contact me at cpicb.nrmcpatients@nhs.net

Thank you. Sam, Practice Manager

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