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Unhelpful

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"Unhelpful "

About: Headstone Road Surgery

Appalled at the service from this surgery. As someone who works at a different surgery in the area I fully understand the pressure GP clinics are under but feel its disgusting that reception refuse to do telephone triage in order to book appointments for patients. My elderly father who is not Internet savvy was left to ignore his health problems as he couldn't book his own appointment until noticed by family members who booked the appointment for him via the lengthy online service. In addition to this he was asked to take in samples and couldn't even get through the door without a going through a system of buzzers and speakers. On delivering his samples he was rudely told off by reception staff for not getting them there before midday when he had never been given any such instruction in the first place. The only saving grace is that the Dr who called was timely and pleasant. Really disappointed with the overall experience for my Dad who has been left feeling like a massive inconvenience to the surgery. Highly recommend review of the reception services for patient care.

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Responses

Response from Headstone Road Surgery 2 years ago
Headstone Road Surgery

Submitted on 02/08/2021 at 08:45
Published on nhs.uk at 20:29

Dear Anonymous

Thank you for feedback. We are very sorry to learn about your father’s experience. It is often very helpful for anyone to raise any issues with the Practice Manager in the first instance. Our normal Complaints Procedure is that the concerned party should contact the Practice Manager to discuss the situation in some detail. They will in turn thoroughly investigate and provide a response to the points raised.

The way GP surgeries work has changed during the COVID pandemic and there are two methods of contacting HRS – either via phone or via on-line consultation (Klinik) which is accessed via our website. We completely understand that some of our patients are not comfortable using an online platform so many of our patients call us directly and make an appointment for a telephone triage with a Clinician. We keep our phone lines free to enable this to happen easily. For some reason, this did not happen on this occasion and we wish to apologise for this. We will investigate who took the call and ensure that all our Call Handlers are very clear with the procedure so that this doesn’t happen again.

In order to continue to protect our patients and staff, in terms of infection control and prevention, as we are still in the COVID pandemic, all entries to the surgery are screened via intercom to ensure that we allow for social distancing in the waiting room. Mask wearing is also required.

Whilst we are pleased to learn that the Doctor was pleasant to your father when they spoke, we are sorry that the clinician did not explain the process for returning the sample back to the practice. Patients are usually advised to drop in specimens before 12pm so that the sample can be sent to the hospital before the courier collection for the Lab which is by 12.45pm daily. Learning from your father’s experience, we will remind all our clinicians of this deadline so that they make patients aware too.

If you or your father would like to discuss his experience in more detail with the Practice Manager, she would be very happy to do so. In the meantime, please let him know that we sincerely apologise for his recent experience and hope that going forward, his confidence in the practice will be restored.

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