"unable to get appointment"

I am very sorry you feel the care you have received from Riverside is not up to standard.

Like all three practices in March, and in line with the national shortage of doctors, we do struggle to recruit enough doctors to satisfy the rising demand. Here at Riverside we employ three Advanced Nurse Practitioners (ANP’s) who have all done extensive post graduate training. This allows them to examine, diagnose and prescribe for patients in a very similar ways to doctors. They are obviously not doctors, and will refer to the doctor if they are presented with anything beyond their clinical ability.

Because your comment is anonymous, I can’t look into you having not been reviewed for cancer or “withholding” medication from your mother. Both of these issues are extremely important and I would be grateful if you can let me know your details, so I can investigate.

At face value, there are two points I would like to make on these issues:

Firstly, follow up reviews for cancer care is normally carried out and organised by the hospital consultant. The practice can and does refer patients onto the local consultant for review and follow up, when a new patient arrive with us. But once we have referred, the care is provided by the hospital and unless the consultant asks the GP to review, that care rests with the consultant.

Secondly, we do not routinely withhold repeat medication requests from patients. But if it is an item that can be purchased over the counter, we would ask the patient to buy it. This is in-line with the Cambridgeshire CCG policy for all practices. The only other time we would perhaps not issue a repeat medication, is if the item was prescribed by a hospital consultant and the consultant has not written to request the GP provides ongoing repeat medication.

I am not suggesting we can’t make mistakes or that we never get it wrong, of course we can. But I would be very happy to look into these issues for you, if you can please contact me the surgery. That way if we have got it wrong we can stop it from happening again.

Kind regards

Paul Carroll

Practice Manager