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Dreadful service, phones are never answered.

Story from nhs.uk

"Dreadful service, phones are never answered."

About: Burley Park Medical Centre

I have been extremely disappointed by the service offered by this GP.

On signup, I was told that if I required an appointment, I should ring before 8am. However, upon doing this, I found that before 8am, I simply received an automated message telling me the surgery was closed. If I rang shortly after 8am, the line was busy, leading to the call being disconnected.

This happened for many days in a row. After this frustration, I rang several times over the period of an hour to try and speak to someone, once again the line was busy and I was never able to speak to anyone.

I needed an appointment to review my medications, as is standard practice for new patients. However, due to the days of poor communication, I am now running very low on supplies of my medication. My medication is linked to my anxiety, my experiences with this practice have caused me a great deal of stress and anxiety over the last weeks, worsening my mental health.

I have visited the surgery in person to try and arrange an appointment but I was told the next possible appointment was in several weeks and once again, that I should ring in before 8am to receive an appointment. It seems the surgery needs better systems in place to arrange appointments and to actually answer their phones.

The times I have been into the surgery, the receptionists have been fairly friendly. I have no comment on the quality of the doctors, as I was never able to see one!

Overall, my experience with this surgery has exacerbated my mental illness and left me having to ration medication. I'm appalled by the lack of care this service offers. I am lucky to be young and able-bodied, I cannot imagine what it would be for a patient suffering from chronic pain or in the need of long-term care from their GP to have to experience this poor service. I have now signed up to a new doctor, who can hopefully provide a competent service.

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Responses

Response from Burley Park Medical Centre 5 years ago
Burley Park Medical Centre

Submitted on 31/10/2018 at 11:58
Published on nhs.uk at 12:06

Dear Sir/Madam

Please accept my apologies for the delay in responding to your feedback. We should routinely receive notification of postings on NHS Choices, but we, unfortunately did not receive an e-mail alerting us about your comments.

I have only recently come across your response when reviewing NHS Choices.

Having discussed your feedback as a team, we are sorry that your experience of the Practice was poor.

I'd welcome the opportunity to discuss your feedback so that we can gain a better understanding of where things went wrong.

Please contact Heather Reid, Practice Manager on 0113 2953850 if you want to discuss this matter further.

Our opening hours are Monday to Friday 08:00 until 20:00 and Sunday 09:00 - 13:00 so we are struggling to understand why you were asked to telephone before 08:00 when the surgery opens.

We offer a range of appointments which includes pre-bookable up to two weeks in advance and a large number of on the day appointments to help demand.

Our appointments for GPs are limited to two weeks in advance because of the high number of non-attenders if appointments are booked in excess of that period.

We'd therefore welcome further discussion so that we can try to understand why you were told that the next appointment was several weeks away.

You should also have been made aware of our on-line appointment system as this negates the need for patients to telephone the surgery to book appointments.

It would never be our intention to cause distress to a patient or exacerbate a medical condition as our aim is to provide a service that we would be happy to receive ourselves.

Your experiences in trying to book an appointment to obtain medication should have been flagged up within the Practice so that we could have helped you.

Please accept our apologies that this did not happen.

We are currently reviewing our appointment system and how we operate in an attempt to meet rising demand at a time when capacity is falling because of budget cuts and nationwide difficulties in recruiting clinical staff to general practice.

We are sorry that you felt the need to register with another practice.

Yours faithfully

Heather Reid

Practice Manager

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