"Some great features"

The doctors at the practice are fantastic. You can usually see the same one each time which is not always possible at practices these days. This means the continuity of care is good. Having said that even the locums they employ seem interested I really can’t fault the GP’s in any way. They have referred us on for surgery quickly when needed. The GP’s along with their visiting community midwife have seen us through the birth of our first child too! I like the system of being able to book telephone calls online. The Drs always make a sensible decision whether they need to follow up the telephone call with a visit in person, this usually matches our expectation (e.g slight medication change deal with by phone, investigations for new syncope events you really need to go in person).

Where there do need to be improvements is with the reception and admin team. There was a lovely lady possibly Australian who was very helpful, unfortunately she has left now. Those that remain are difficult at best bordering on plain rude at times, if you haven’t been able to book an appt online it can be a battle with receptionists to get one. The reception/admin are also very unorganised. We recently asked for a letter, 2 work colleagues needed the same letter, their practices both charged £15. I understand this is private work but castle charged just short of three times the price for the exact same form.

Not only this but the GP was more than happy to fill out the form, we dropped it off and it wasn’t given to the doctor for a week. During the next consultation the GP asked if we were going to drop the form in for her to fill out meaning it must have been sat all that week in reception. She kindly managed to find it doing the admin team’s job for them, completed it and returned it to the reception team for our collection. Three days later when I went to pick the form up, it was no where to be seen and they asked for a new copy. I insisted they find the original form as I knew the GP had filled it out. After 40 minutes sat in reception they finally found it filed away in the wrong cupboard. Not apologetic in the slightest.

I’d certainly recommend Castle as I feel that the clinical team’s great performance overshadows the poor performance on the admin side. The issues are nothing that a ‘customer care course’ and the odd smile here and there couldn’t fix.