Care Opinion

Text size

Theme

Language

Videos in BSL or ISL
Help with language translation
Help with reading or listening

No Longer a family doctor

Story from nhs.uk

"No Longer a family doctor"

About: Burton Croft Surgery

I have been a patient of this practice for over 20 years as has my wife and my children have known no other GP practice. When once it was situated in a large house on Burton Croft it was run with great efficiency where appointments could be booked for the Doctor of your choice within a reasonable timescale. Since moving to its new premises it has grown significantly and is clearly oversubscribed ( although still taking new patients). I base this on the fact that I no longer try to book appointments as when I have attempted to do so recently I have been offered appointments weeks in advance. My wife recently attempted to book an appointment with her preferred GP who she has a long standing relationship with and was advised that the appointment would be in 6 weeks time. The receptionists in all cases try to steer people to the newly introduced patient walk in service which operates on weekdays between 0830 - 1030. Sounds good?? The real experience is this- In the last week I accompanied my wife to the surgery walk in service after she refused the appointment 6 weeks hence. I accompanied her as she was so ill she felt she could not drive safely. On opening the surgery door at shortly after 10:00am we were met by a sea of people in the waiting room, on booking in with the receptionist the non medical person asks you in the public and silent space your reasons for seeing a Doctor (confidentiality & privacy concerns) the receptionist then logs it on a computer and this is apparently so you can only discuss this one issue on seeing an available GP any deviation from the logged reason will not be discussed and further visits to the GP are required. In this instance there were 4 GPs attending the large volume of people and I sat with my wife for approaching one and a half hours to see a GP she has never met before and neither of us knew worked at the practice. There also appears to be a large turnover of GPs at this practice so it is unlikely they will never meet again. In summary if you want to make appointments within a reasonable timescale, want to see the Doctor of your choice or want to see a doctor of a particular gender, or are not prepared to wait in line for inordinate amounts of time then this is not the GP practice for you. Sadly after 20 plus years we have decided it is no longer the practice for our family either

More about:
nhs.uk logo
Do you have a similar story to tell? Tell your story & make a difference ››

Responses

Response from Burton Croft Surgery 9 years ago
Burton Croft Surgery

Submitted on 27/01/2016 at 14:35
Published on nhs.uk on 19/10/2017 at 10:31

We are very sorry to hear that this has been your experience.

We are very interested in patient feedback and we are currently running our patient survey for 2016 and we will be looking at feedback from this to see if there are any further changes that we need to make.

We felt the introduction of the walk in service was necessary, as we felt we were not offering the best options to our urgent or on the day demand patients.

We realised that this would have some impact on standard appointments, but have also invested in more resource over the last 12 to 15 months to combat this issue. We have extra doctors working and also currently have 2 Registrars, so we have more capacity.

We have actually invested in more resource and now have more GP’s and Nurses. We have also started opening later and have appointments available on a weekend.

Most of the GP’s at the practice are long standing GP’s, or medium to longer term Registrars. On occasion, we may need to employ a locum doctor to help with cover, but in the main it is our standard set of GP’s that offer appointments and cover. We would not consider that we have a high turnover of GP’s.

One of the issues that affect the availability of a particular GP could be that they work part time. If the GP only works part time, there will only be a certain amount of appointments available in a working week, in the same way that anyone working part time would be affected. It is worth checking our website or contacting the surgery to find out more about a particular GP’s working pattern and availability.

We have tried to combat this issue with ensuring that some appointments are made available a week in advance for these GP’s and these appointments can be booked by calling the surgery. However, there are only so many appointment that are available for individual GP’s and once they are booked this inevitable will create waiting time to see a particular GP.

From a continuity perspective, the necessary information for any of our GP’s to care for you in an appropriate way is contained within your clinical record. All of our GP’s have the necessary experience in which to read your clinical history and make the best decisions with you for your health.

We hope that this has helped you to understand the options available and one some way to address your concerns

We would like to thank you for your feedback.

Kind Regards,

The Partners and Management at Burton Croft Surgery

  • {{helpful}} {{helpful == 1 ? "person thinks" : "people think"}} this response is helpful
Opinions
Next Response j
Previous Response k