"Failure to rectify a mistake"

I had contacted the practice by phone (impossible) and e-consult (time-consuming and convoluted) about a medical condition that potentially needed a referral to a specialist.

A locum doctor had then contacted me on a Saturday and filled in some forms to request that a referral to a specialist would be funded.

Some weeks later I received 2 text messages from the practice saying that funding had been refused, & that this may have been due to incomplete forms & info.

I was asked to ring the practice so that they could take the correct information.

Why could the doctor not have rung me?

I rang the practice and as usual, had to wait an extraordinarily long time on the telephone.

The admin staff who answered then told me I needed to complete an e-consult if I wanted a GP to ring me back within 2 days.

Or I would have to wait for 2-3 weeks for a GP appointment.

I pointed out that the practice had made a mistake/failed to supervise their locum properly - surely they could have saved me the extra time in contacting the practice ? At the very least they could get a doctor to ring me back now? But no.

So I filled in an e-consult (again) and tried to point out that patients have busy lives, too. It's not reasonable to ask patients to phone AND fill in e-consults even when the practice has sent incomplete forms and thus jeopardised my specialist appointment.

But even the e-consult did not result in a phone call from the practice doctor dealing with this mistake.

Instead, I received another text message (to which I can't respond!) saying that a telephone appointment has been made in another 10 day's time!

This is farcical. Nobody at the practice is even interested in seeing me personally to investigate this medical condition.

But in addition, they are now jeopardizing my appointment with a specialist due to delays and incompetence.

I had also asked them to let me see a copy of their faulty referral and the procedure for asking for funding for a specialist referral (is there an appeal?), but these queries were simply ignored.