"Overall good care, but some access and..."

Thank you for taking the time to leave feedback on NHS choice. I am sorry to hear of the difficulties you have experienced.

Unfortunately as comments are made anonymously and involve clinical care, without being able to look into this in more detail, by reviewing your notes, I am only able to offer an explanation to the non-clinical items raised.

Please can I ask you to contact us directly so we can investigate your concerns in an aim to resolve these with/for you as we do try our best to provide a good service to all our patients?

I will attempt to address what I can of the 7 items raised:

1. As we are a same day service, patients know they phone in when they area able to take a call.

We do have on-line appointments available every day and they are released a day in advance, to align with a same day service.

I was surprised to hear you find them “rare as hens teeth” as these are often not booked, as we monitor these and release them to normal use if they are not booked on-line within an hour of the appointment time so as not to waste them.

There are systems in place for Deaf people who can either book on-line (an alert shows in their notes so the GP knows the patient is hard of hearing) or the GP arranges with those patients how they are going to communicate, so there are a variety of systems in place to accommodate these patients, with their GP.

2. In regards to your comment on a Family member.

Due to confidentiality that patient would need to contact us about this, as we are unable to comment on their personal information or on a clinical matter via this forum.

3. Continuity of care – We encourage patients to speak to the same doctor, to avoid the situation you mention.

In an aim to help with this, we publish weekly which doctor is in on what days so that patients can then choose to call in when that GP is next availaibe to avoid the situation you describe. Patients can decide whether they choose to speak to another GP.

Unfortunately there is a national shortage of GPs and we have a GP partner on long term sick leave undergoing treatment for Breast Cancer and so using locum GPs is the only option unfortunately.

We try as much as reasonable possible to use the same locums, for continuity of care, however, due to the national shortage of GPs this is a challenge.

4. Repeat prescriptions being ordered on-line is common practice and encouraged in any GP surgery; you state it’s via an insecure network, posing a gross privacy risk, please be assured that any email address ending in @nhs.net is a secure network. Again, it is a patient’s choice whether to order via this method, you can choose, as there are other ways in which we can take orders, which include via mail, coming into the practice - there is no need to queue as there is a prescription ordering mailbox in the foyer, which is open from 7am – 10:30pm Monday to Saturday and 10am – 5pm on a Sunday, you can fax if you have that facility, so you don’t have to order online.

5. You agree that all prescription requests come in via a secure network and as mentioned above, any email address ending in @nhs.net is secure.

Our prescription ordering address is: kws.prescriptions@nhs.net, therefore secure.

You should receive an acknowledgement of your prescription being safely received, however the computer system relies on human input to actually order your prescription and there are safety measures in place to ensure medications are issued appropriately,

6. Without consulting your notes, I am unable to comment on the exact reason items appear to “drop off” your list, there will no doubt be a valid reason, for this, however without being able to look in the notes, I am unable to comment. All patients with a chronic disease have an annual review, so if you do have a chronic disease, I cannot see how you wouldn’t have a medication review, as we would not issue medications without this being carried out.

Again without looking into your notes, am unable to comment.

7. Th