"Shocking access to service"

This surgery has gradually worsened and the changes seem to be beneficial to the practitioners but without regard to patients.

In recent months it has become pot luck to phone and get to speak with a receptionist to book an appointment, even when I was numbers 1 and 2 in the queue it took a minimum of 15 minutes for the call to be answered.

This wasn’t a one off either, on 2 occasions I have actually given up waiting.

I welcome change and I first noticed in practice when a friend arrived for a walk in appointment, some 15 minutes after I had arrived for mine. In discussion she mentioned the walk in service. This is a good thing, but became frustrating when she was called 10 minutes before me. I was eventually seen and refered for an x-ray.

Due to a clear result I wanted a follow up appt to understand more about my pain.

I had joined the online system so tried to book through the app. I couldn’t remember my password or email address so tried to reset this. If you forget a password you normally use your email to recover this, but not with this system, the email and username is required. After another long wait on the phone I decided to go to the surgery and book directly.

This was the most shocking situation for a patient. There was 1 appt in 2 days time but I couldn’t make that so Said that I was happy to book the next week, or even later. It was important for me to see one of the partners who I know is competent about a specific injury type. I was told there were no appointments available on any week, but I was invited to use the walk in service. I asked why there were no appointments and the receptionist said that they weren’t released yet. Obviously I inquired more but she didn’t know when they would be released. There was no guidance and I needed to ask more questions to get to the point of finding out that the surgery is moving towards a walk in service only, maybe just for the summer when GP’s were on holiday etc.

I fully understand the need to plan a GP’s working day but in this surgery it feels like the patient is long forgotten, the most important to Lilliput is not having to bring locum’s in, so avoiding cost.

From a patient perspective, the phone system is poor, the online system is poor, the ability to have any personal input on a booking is poor, and to top it off, when you are in this lovely modern building on a hot day, there’s no air con, or windows that open more than 3cm, so sitting for a long time on plastic seats is really uncomfortable! But the practice rooms are nice and cool.

I will say that the GP’s are generally very good, professional, polite and generally very knowledgable, but the management of the practice seems very much about controlling the number of patients through the doors. I understand the demands on GP’s and the need for this but this cannot be managed at the complete disregard for patient needs.

Needless to say My family and I will be moving practices this week.