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Good GPs, poor admin and leadership

Story from nhs.uk

"Good GPs, poor admin and leadership"

About: The Street Lane Practice

- I have always experienced a high quality of care and competence from the GPs at the practice in my appointments with them.

However, 10 minute appointments is overly ambitious, and you do feel rushed.

Unfortunately, leadership at the practice is not up to the required standard.

- Support staff are not well trained and often seem to struggle with the processes and systems used at the practice, with questions unnecessarily referred to other back office staff while you wait on hold.

This wastes time and leads to long delays on the phone for other patients who are waiting on hold.

I note the practice has blamed this issue on a lack of budget to be able to recruit more staff (and this is a key issue), but a lack of training comes from a lack of leadership from the practice manager.

- Another example of a lack of leadership from the practice manager was made clear to me at my last visit.

I noted that reception reported a key member of nursing staff has recently gone on a planned sickness absence for over a month.

However the practice have made no arrangements for a replacement, so patients are instead left to suffer for the practice's lack of planning and are told that they simply have to have their procedures delayed for over a month.

A complete lack of planning and leadership from those responsible.

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Responses

Response from The Street Lane Practice 6 years ago
The Street Lane Practice

Submitted on 12/12/2017 at 08:07
Published on nhs.uk at 10:30

Dear Sir/Madam,

I'm sorry that you've had negative experiences of Street Lane Practice.

I can assure you as GPs we'd like longer than 10 minutes per patient. The problem is that instead of seeing 15-18 patients per surgery we'd potentially be seeing 10-12 which would have a knock on effect with longer waits for routine appointments. It's usually possible when patients have long lists of problems to make a start in the first 10 minute appointment, then trial treatments/order tests and hopefully tie up any loose ends in the follow up appointment. Ultimately though whilst all GPs try to run to 10 minute appointments if it's evident the appointment needs longer we carry on for as long as is required.

With regard to your observations on practice management we have systems to try and ensure that a patient sees the correct clinician at the first appointment. Sometimes this requires reception staff to liaise with their colleagues, or the on call Doctor, which can cause delays but hopefully results in less visits to the surgery for a patient. We hold monthly training sessions for staff to refine our systems. These are run by our Practice Manager alongside the GPs. Clearly from time to time we take on new receptionists and they need to be able to learn our systems and clarify areas of uncertainty.

One of our nurses is on leave at the moment. Her work is being covered by nursing colleagues.

Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback.

Best wishes,

Dr Hobman

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