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Great Doctors - Pity You Can’t Get An Appointment

Story from nhs.uk

"Great Doctors - Pity You Can’t Get An Appointment"

About: Fleet Medical Centre

I have lived in Fleet for the majority of my life and have been a patient at this surgery since it opened. I have always been extremely satisfied with the quality of care, but my recent experience of booking and securing appointments has been shocking.

In the past you could always book appointments with your own GP in a week to two weeks for a non-urgent consultation.

Now that is not the case.

You cannot get a non-urgent appointment with a particular Doctor for 4 to 5 weeks time unless you call on a Monday afternoon when the appointments are released. Even if you’re not concerned about who you see (and I haven’t seen my actual GP for years) I have been told there are no appointments available face to face for the next month - but I could book a phone call in 4 weeks time! I’ve even had the ridiculous situation whereby the surgery called me following blood tests (that I now had to go to Farnham for) saying I needed to book an appointment with the GP I last saw and when I asked for one I was told there were none available, leading to significant frustration on my part and no continuity of care.

To add insult to injury, if I need to try to get an appointment I have to ring over and over again (to get past the engaged tone) and then have to hold for 20 to 30 minutes to speak to someone.

This now means that booking my next appointment (on Monday for more than a month’s time) will require carving out at least an hour of my working day.

Please please can you review your approach to releasing blocks of appointments, your procedures and your resourcing levels.

The other surgeries in Fleet get much better reviews so there must be a way to sort this out!

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Responses

Response from Fleet Medical Centre 5 years ago
Fleet Medical Centre

Submitted on 26/11/2018 at 15:46
Published on nhs.uk at 16:06

Thank you for your comments - we are sorry for any anxiety caused.

As the largest practice in town and with very high patient expectation, we often do receive more negative feedback than some of the other surgeries.

We have widely communicated that we have recently recruited more additions to our clinical team giving us the largest team we have ever had in place from January 2018. As we are limited on room space and NHS funding we have maximised our space and resources as far as they can possibly reach and to fill in any gaps until that time, we have recruited locum GPs. We are sorry that this means that continuity of care isn't at the level that we would like but we are doing our best to offer as many appointments as possible. We have appointments available both face to face and via telephone or e-consultation available at a variety of times within 2 weeks at this time - although we are sorry that they may not be with the GP you prefer to see or at a time that is convenient to you.

We are sorry if you have had to travel to Farnham for Blood tests - they are available both at the practice on a first come, first served basis or at Aldershot Centre for Health - this is a centrally controlled contract and some practices have withdrawn blood tests on site completely as a result - we have so far managed to resist this and use resources from other areas to honour blood tests at the practice.

Please do contact our Practice Director directly should you wish to discuss this matter further and he will be more than happy to help you with a resolution. Fleet Medical Centre

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