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Impossible to contact by phone

Story from nhs.uk

"Impossible to contact by phone"

About: Burnham Medical Centre

Over the course of several days I have found it impossible to contact the surgery by phone to either make an appointment or speak to a GP. Constantly engaged. Eventually spoke to someone on 111 who took details and was told someone would contact us within 6 hours. Over 6 hours later a person rang to say there were no further slots for the day and we would be phoned tomorrow (obviously everyone had gone home). Is it only possible to make some kind of appointment via 111? GP surgeries are apparently open and accessible but this does not appear to be the case for ordinary GP contact. It is appreciated that Covid has affected everything and jabs are now taking precedence but surely one should be able to contact the surgery for general health worries. The chemist is always helpful and open for repeat prescriptions etc.

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Responses

Response from Burnham Medical Centre 2 years ago
Burnham Medical Centre

Submitted on 18/05/2021 at 12:21
Published on nhs.uk at 19:19

As mentioned in our responses to other reviews, we hope to improve our current telephone system as soon as possible which we hope will help to improve our patient’s access to the Practice.

We are aware of NHS England guidance that encourages practices to offer patients a choice of telephone or face to face appointments from 17 May 2021.

We are currently reviewing how we can best do this safely, taking into account the needs of other patients who have no choice but to attend for their appointments, many of whom are vulnerable to infection, and our staff.

Our waiting room capacity at both Burnham and Berrow is reduced to only 6 patients on each site to ensure social distancing measures are in place. This is a reduction from the previous 30 patients each waiting room could hold. We are currently awaiting sight of the full national guidance on how this can be achieved.

In the interim, we will be continuing with initial contacts via telephone and an agreement between patient and clinician about the best way to manage their care, as we have been doing. We apologise that you appear to have been given a timeline for our response that we were on this occasion unable to achieve. We are however making concerted efforts to respond to every patient as quickly and effectively as possible within the constraints of the resources at our disposal.

Thank you for giving us this opportunity to respond to your concerns.

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