"Impossible to contact"

1. I have a number of issues to resolve, but most immediately I need a chest X-ray ...

2. I have called the surgery six times over two days, each call remaining unanswered after between 20 and 35 minutes of waiting.

3. I have had previous hospital test results sent to the surgery, but not recorded on patient access. I’m not sure if it was their fault.

4. Last week the phone was answered, and my welcome test results were relayed over the phone. The results are still not on patient access.

5. Today I accessed eConsult and reached the end of the process to be told I needed to contact my GP (which is where I began yesterday), so I rang 111.

6. After the 111 triage, I was advised that I may have COVID-19, (I don’t).

7. The COVID-19 team rang and decided I didn’t have COVID, but that I needed a chest X-ray.

8. 111 rang to assess my condition. They decided I needed a chest X-ray and booked one for me this evening.

9. I went for a chest X-ray - which is another story. They said I needed some blood tests, but it would take up to two hours.

10. So tomorrow, I will try to ring the surgery again. If they had answered the phone in the first instance, I wouldn’t have wasted so much valuable NHS time.

This is such a disjointed system, but if the primary care point of contact doesn’t work, the rest of the system is put under further pressure.

And the Langstone Way Surgery has failed as the first point of contact this week. It’s not the first time, and it’s not just since COVID. There’s something wrong here. I have found the doctors and nurses competent, interested, concerned and charming, but something is seriously wrong with the management.

The relationship between the GP, Patient Access, 111, eConsult, and registration with the NHS for eConsult is seriously unsatisfactory, and the latter is so complex that it is off putting, and no commercial organisation would accept it. But if you can’t make the first base, which I take to be the GP surgery, the patient is seriously disadvantaged.

Post COVID I’m going to look elsewhere, unless this surgery management gets a grip. Their basic problem is the physical configuration of the building makes having consultations difficult, and the staff - for whom I have the greatest sympathy - are seeing patients at the doorstep, during which time the phones can’t be answered. So it’s no wonder that there’s a knock on to eConsult and 111.

These premises don’t work under present circumstances, the management seems unresponsive, but the clinicians are fine. I don’t know how the organisation is supposed to work, but it’s not working for patients, and my guess is that it’s not working for the staff either.