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Dreadful service

Story from nhs.uk

"Dreadful service"

About: Hillfoot Surgery

I have been registered as a patient at this practice since birth and the level of care and attention i have received over the years has vastly disintegrated. I have had numerous ongoing medical issues that have required urgent and attentive care but due to the system implemented with regards to obtaining appointments at this surgery i have all too frequently been denied access to been seen by the relevant medical professionals. The telephone triage system in place is appalling due to the difficulties faced with the way in which you have to call at 7.30am on that morning which is all too inconvenient when i work unsociable hours. When i eventually do manage to get through to a receptionist i am let down by the number of appointments you claim to have available and how unaccommodating you are when offering the appointments which are all too inconvenient with my work commitments. The problems with this system are equally reciprocated with the online booking system where once again very few appointments are listed.

I have been suffering from an ongoing medical issue and following repeated visits to the surgery to been seen by numerous different doctors, my illness has not adequately been dealt with. I feel enough care and attention is not given to young patients and i found myself having to repeatedly ask to be booked for a blood test rather than the doctors recommending this process of diagnosis. When i eventually had my blood test my results came back clearly highlighting all my concerns and i was simply rung by the surgery to be told to come and collect my prescription, No amount of advice or information was given with regards to what my test results showed and how and why i needed to take the prescribed medication. Again i was disappointed in the lack of care and sent away with a lack of reassurance that this was going to solve part of my ongoing concerns. I have since completed this course of medication and wanted to know whether i needed to be issued with another dosage which could only be assessed via another blood test. However yet again i was let down by the few appointments the surgery seemed to want to offer me and found myself turned away with no appointment. I couldn't understand why the GP whom i had seen couldn't manually book me in for another blood test rather than simply sending me back to the reception area where the receptionists were unwilling to help me fit an appointment around my work schedule. I find it most frustrating and the length of time it takes for a patient to be diagnosed is worrying to say the least.

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Responses

Response from Hillfoot Surgery 8 years ago
Hillfoot Surgery

Submitted on 25/01/2016 at 11:55
Published on nhs.uk on 19/10/2017 at 10:30

It is most unfortunate to read that you feel that the quality of care you are receiving at the practice had disintegrated, and that you are unhappy with the appointment system we currently employ. As your comments are anonymous it is not possible to comment on the specifics of your experience, but I will seek to address some of the generic comments raised in an effort to reassure you we strive at all times to deliver patient centred, high quality patient care.

With regard to the appointment system, in order to ensure we are able to see acutely ill patients as promptly as possible we operate a telephone triage system. Appointments are released on the day of surgery and patients are asked to telephone that day and requst an initial telephone consultation, when the GP can assess them and if necessary ask that they attend the surgery for further consultation / treatment. Over the Xmas holidays, in order to be able to deal with the high number of urgent requests for appointment, we have increased the number of appointments that are released on the day, which has resulted in less being able to be booked further ahead. I can only conclude that this is why you have had difficulty finding an appointment that suits your work commitments. We are open from 7.30am to 7.30 pm each day - and have avaiability througout that time. If you are not able to have an appointment between those times, we also offer the facility for you to email your query (called an e-consult) which is then forwarded to our GP and he/she responds within 2 working days. Just log on to the Hillfoot Website and follow the prompts for an e-consultation.

With regard to the GP sending you back to reception to request a blood test - it is our nurses who take the bloods, and if the GP was initially unable to find an appointment that fitted your working patterns, he would have sent you back to reception to book one as they are more able to look flexibly at the rotas and see how you could be accomodated.

You were unhappy that you were just asked to collect a prescription following your blood results, and not asked to see a GP to discuss the results. I would like to reassure you that if the GP felt it was necessary he would have asked for the reception staff to contact you with an appointment, and not just issued a prescription. Without knowing your diagnosis it is not possible to comment specifically, but the GPs assure me that before any blood tests are requested they would have discussed this with you at the consultation, and the possible actions that would arise as once the results are received.

On a more general note, we are constantly reviewing and evaluating our appointments system in order to best meet the needs of the patients at this practice. We have also recently employed a new GP and a new GP partner had joined the surgery. We hope that this is reassurance that we continue to strive to deliver the best care possible. On behalf of the surgery I would like to apologise to you as you feel your care did not reach the standards we strive to acheive. If you feel you want to discuss your particular case in more detail please contact myself alison Stewart the practice manager at the surgery, or write in with the specifics of your complaint and I will formally investigate and respond to the issues you raise.

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