"Hoylake and Meols used to be a wonderful..."

...these days it is absolutely atrocious. I used to chuckle at my friends attempts to obtain appointments elsewhere but H&M is now equally appalling. The standard response given by this surgery to such reviews is to say 'there are no easy answers' - that's easy to say but is not a strategy to overcome the current issues - what is your strategy to deal with what is a fundamental problem with the service you purport to provide please?

As a person who works, like the majority of the population, their suggestion that you visit the surgery at 8am to try to get an appointment is unrealistic at best. I have yet to find a single resident who has managed to get through on the phone at 8am, and indeed all I hear about H&M these days is how awful the service is, I feel it is time for a petition or a multiple signature objection to the way this surgery no longer serves its community, I would email their practice manager but can't get an email address - we each pay our National Insurance contributions but cannot get to see a GP - there are never any routine appointments so that customers can plan their work around their health care requirements. Of course the GPs themselves still receive their substantial remuneration yet those of us who work outside the NHS are unable to utilise this vital service. I wonder what would happen if the police or fire brigade or even the lifeboat asked you to ring back tomorrow or subsequent days because they couldn't sort you out right now...

Ongoing care to deal with an issue that has not been resolved means waiting up to 3 weeks for a GP appointment every time, which means you are back to square one before the subsequent appointment happens. You can't go elsewhere because you need a referral first, you can't go to walk ins unless you take a full day off work, often unpaid, and when you do, they laughingly suggest you should've gone to your GP first...

Hoylake and Meols medical centre are a joke, they are not fit for purpose and do not serve the community well. It is time to stop giving poor excuses and standard responses, and change the way you deliver your service.