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Unhelpful and unavailable

Story from nhs.uk

"Unhelpful and unavailable"

About: Brownlow Group Practice

I've been a patient at this surgery for more than 8 years and in all this time I rarely managed to see a doctor.

You are always referred to a nurse and left with a "that was pointless" feeling after the consultation.

It is virtually impossible to get an appointment on the day or within a reasonable period of time, especially if you are a working person.

I've also had to wait at least 20 minutes once arrived for my appointment.

The staff is unhelpful and unsympathetic. They tried to send me away on multiple occasions during the walk in days claiming my condition was not in within the walk in services for the day.

I had a long standing condition for which they provided no help and dismissed with a "there's nothing we can do" and forced me to seek private help to manage it.

On one occasion, they failed to call me back with the results of my tests, despite them being positive. Only found out the results when I called them several weeks later.

All in all, would not recommend and I would change if there was an alternative nearby.

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Responses

Response from Brownlow Group Practice 8 years ago
Brownlow Group Practice

Submitted on 24/03/2016 at 13:32
Published on nhs.uk on 19/01/2017 at 09:16

Hello. We are sorry that this has been your experience.

Whilst some things are more appropriate for the nurse, we have 25 doctors at the practice and you should always be able to see a doctor if appropriate, so if you find this is not happening please discuss with reception or put something in writing for the attention of the practice manager.

Again, we apologise if you have had to wait for an appointment.

We monitor these figures regularly, so we can actively manage demand, and the latest figures show an average wait of 10 minutes from appointment time to the patient being seen.

We realise that even 10 minutes is not ideal, but the nature of medicine is that sometimes urgent things can cause an unforeseen delay.

Finally with regards to test results, the usual procedure is that we either text you your results, or ask you to phone about a week after having had them done, so once again apologies if this was not communicated to you well enough, or if an expected call did not materialise.

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