"Never have appointment available, short of staff"

I am really sorry to receive this review, and that you believe we are not providing good healthcare to your family.

We are always working urgently and reviewing systems to increase appointment availability as much as possible;

1. Hiring additional GPs (not as easy as it sounds)

2. Reducing double bookings - making sure patients are only booked in once for the same reason and appropriately booked

3. Removing patients who are persistent non-attenders (a huge number of appointments are wasted each month by patients making appointments and thoughtlessly not attending/not cancelling, so the appointment can be given to another patient in need) If a patient misses three appointments without reason, we may remove them from the practice list

Please contact me directly so I can look into what's happened here and make sure we are providing the correct service to your family, which I cannot do from an anonymous review.

complaints.deptfordsurgery@nhs.net

Julie

Patient Experience Manager