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So difficult to make an appointment!

Story from nhs.uk

"So difficult to make an appointment!"

About: Ladybarn Group Practice

I work 9-5 Mon-Fri so need an evening appt and my wife works nights so the days available are limited. Whenever I need a same day appointment I'm told I need to call before 9:30am. On doing so you are left in a queue for at least 10mins if not longer and then when you finally get through you are greeted with rude and abrupt staff answering the phone most of the time. On the most recent occasion, I waited 10mins in the queue from 9:20am, to try and book an evening appointment. When I did get through I was told to call back after 10am despite the call menu advising to call before 9:30am for same day. Calling after 10am it is impossible to get through (constantly engaged). This practice really needs a re-think. The medical care on the whole has been good but getting through on the phone is extremely difficult (not enough staff perhaps) and the treatment by the reception staff is appalling (training issue perhaps). Clearly I am not alone in my thinking when I read some of the other reviews. The board for this practice should be taking these complaints seriously.

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Responses

Response from Ladybarn Group Practice 5 years ago
Ladybarn Group Practice

Submitted on 08/04/2019 at 14:32
Published on nhs.uk at 15:06

We use a triage system for urgent on the day appointments from 8.00 to 9.30 a.m.

This is where a clinician will call patients back within the hour.

Following that call, if an appointment is deemed necessary, patients are then booked into the emergency appointments reserved for that day.

We do ask patients to telephone the surgery after 10 a.m. if the call is not of an urgent nature so that our reception deal can deal with all urgent calls.

We have recently revisited our telephone system and this is still in early stages with ongoing updates and amendments.

We apologise if you have had significant waiting time on hold and can assure you that we do our upmost to try and keep these waiting times to a minimum.

However, at certain times of the day, the wait may be significantly higher than we would like.

We apologise that you feel that our staff were not polite when answering your call and we have fed this information back and we are also to hold an inhouse training session for all staff.

Thank you for taking time to leave feedback as this provides us with valuable insight.

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