"Overall, an excellent service."

I am a regularattendee at the surgery (diabetes, Crohn's disease, dodgy heart and a few more) and have always received a professional and courteous service from the staff - whether receptionist, nurse or doctor.

There are a couple of minor niggles that I feel coulbe be avoided:

1.

I use the on-line system for appointments which is generally OK, but sometimes you do have to check several times to find a cancellation if you want a doctor's appointment that week/fortnight. I appreciate that it is not the surgeries fault, but it is very frustrating to find that there are no appointments availabe for the next three weeks - and then see that there is a cancellation in ten minutes time, whilst you live twenty minutes away! Telephone/nurses appointments are much better and usually are available within a couple of days or so.

2.

Prescriptions. I have my prescriptions sent to the chemist, who then delivers the meds to me on a two month basis. Great system when it works. I have two clinics and the GPs all issuing prescriptions for me when a change is needed I seem to get a 28 day supply of the new drug regardless of when the rest of the prescription runs out. Surely it must be easy for the staff member who does the prescribing to just check the dates and issue the right amount to bring them all into line.

3. (the last one!)

Medicine reviews. On the check sheet which comes with your meds, you often see "Review is needed before this can be re-issued".. Fine, just how it should be. The review is normally done and I don't hear anything about it, but why do they sometimes leave it until two days before the old prescription expires? This means the patient (ME) having to phone the pharmacy to see if there is a problem and then when they say they don't anything for me, ring the surgery to find out why not. The comuter system must be able to flag up reviews a couple of weeks before they are due and ensure that there is no break in the timing of the prescrition.

That's it - whinge over.

With the new naming and reorganisation of the surgery, I hope the reception staff got a pay rise. They have the most thankless job in the surgery!