"Lack of communication and poor service"

I am writing to you my disappointment with the service at Ordsall Health Surgery Manchester, Salford. This is NOT a complaint against the NHS as I think the NHS is absolutely fantastic!!

The poor service began when I registered as a temporary patient and was told it would last for 3 months. I registered and 2 weeks later called to make an appointment due to me suffering with bleeding. I was then told that in fact I was not registered anymore for some unknown reason. No one could tell me why I was not registered anymore and that it should last for 3 months.

I had to walk down to the surgery again to get the registration form and register as a temporary patient again. After being registered I immediately made an appointment, which was 2 weeks later. By this point it had been almost a month since it happened.

I came for my appointment and was told that I could have no tests done. This was due to my smear test results not being on record and I was told by the GP that the lab will refuse the test if I am not due a smear so she would do some digging and get back to me on the same day to see if she could find my results. I know I had a test 2 years ago and it was clear but they for some reason the results were proving hard to find.

On leaving the appointment, I spoke with the reception team to make sure that I would be registered for 3 months this time and not just 2 weeks as I would need to book another appointment once hearing back from the GP on that day. The member of staff on reception had no idea what I was talking about and could not understand why I was only registered for 2 weeks last time and whether they could check if it is 2 weeks or 3 months this time. The staff member told me that they would speak with thir colleague who deals with registrations and get them to call me back either on that day or the next.

I waited for 4 days and no phone call from anyone! So I called the practice and was told someone was looking into it. The person I spoke to on the phone had a terrible customer service manner and kept telling me that I was registered.

No one seemed to be understanding what I was asking!

Eventually I was put through to the person who deals with registrations who was also not the friendliest on the phone and i felt that everyone just sounded like I was being a nuisance to them. They explained to me that in fact the first time they had set an expiry date of 2 weeks on the registration but this time it was 3 months. That was all I wanted to know. I would kindly suggest here the reception staff need to know more about the registration process so they can help patients with queries about this, rather than being told I don't know or I don't understand every time.

I had still not heard anything about whether my results could be located or not but I was told there was someone looking into it and they would get back to me asap.

I left it for a while as I didn't want to pester but by almost 3 weeks later I still had not heard a thing! I called the surgery again and was told the person who was dealing with it has been off. Which is incredibly poor as this should have been passed over to someone else in their absence or at least communicated to me. I was told I would get a phone call the following Monday.

I received a phone call on the Monday to be told that they can't access my records because I am a temporary patient. This is so disappointing and extremely poor! I had waited 3 weeks to be told, 'sorry we can't help you'.

In total it has now been 2 months since it happened and I have still not seen anyone for it or been tested for anything.

All in all I would suggest that the reception and admin staff are better trained to have the knowledge to be able to help and also that better communication lines are put in place between staff, admin teams and patients. I believe all of the failures have been due to a lack of training and lack of communication and I am greatly disappointed with your services.

I sincerely hope once I do get seen and tested that it is not anything serious as you will certainly be receiving a MUCH more serious complaint should this be the case!