"Appointments"

Thanks for you feedback and a huge thanks for not criticising our very hard working reception team - you are very right they have a miserable time of things trying to balance demand versus limited availability of appointments.

Sadly there is no appointment system around that will meet patient demand - patient demand is just well in excess of the capacity we have to deliver care.

Our capacity to meet demand is limited by doctor and nurse numbers which in turn is limited by primary care funding and a national GP recruitment and retention crisis.

Furthermore the current funding envelope limits the numbers of receptionists we can recruit and retain.

But we have recently had a successful recruitment program to reception so hopefully things should improve.

The government has recently announced improved funding for the NHS in general - 3.4% per year is not a huge amount, but if much of this is channeled to primary care (seeing as our percentage of overall cost to the NHS is well below 10%) it would make a huge difference to what we can offer patients in the next 5 years and may also have the added benefit of reducing demand on secondary care services that are much more expensive.

We need patients. like yourself to speak to your MP to demand a better health offering from primary care.

This better health offering requires more funding so we can recruit and retain more doctors and nurses and thus political support for this change is essential but we can improve what we offer you if we are supported to do so by the government.

Thanks once again for your very considered complaint.

Dr James Boorer