"Going downhill...fast"

Despite glossy marketing promises to the contrary, the service from the surgery - now that Lakeside have taken it over - is easily the worst it has ever been in the 20+ years I have been registered here. The doctors and staff are, as always, helpful and professional, but managing to contact the surgery or getting an appointment has become just so difficult and frustrating. Today it has taken a significant number of attempts to even get through to the automated answering system and then I am told there are 8 people in the queue in front of me - this has never ever been the case before. It is easily noticeable that there are less staff now available and on a number of occasions recently there has only been 1 receptionist and she was totally swamped as the computer booking in system was broken again so patients were queuing out of the door. It seems that although patients are clearly registered to the Eaton Socon surgery they are more and more often being channelled to visit Cedar House. This is inconvenient and is made significantly worse by the lack of any adequate car parking there. On the plus side the telephone ring-back for a discussion by the Doctor has been useful and efficient but it should not be expected to replace a proper personal surgery appointment. I believe the shrinkage in staff numbers might partly be because a higher than normal amount of people are leaving but also it is clear that a number of people are being transferred to Cedar House - however this is at the expense of the service at Eaton Socon. This is not acceptable. As an example a Doctor noted that abnormal results of a recent blood test for me meant that I should contact him for obvious further discussion and investigation. However I was not contacted by anyone at the surgery about this at all and it was only by chance that I discovered the fact by accessing the online system. That is worrying. For this reason I have tried to see what follow up has been made on some actions promised after a recent appointment, but there is no obvious indication at all of progress on my online patient record and I have given up in frustration after making little headway with the telephone queuing system after 20 mins. I appreciate that all NHS systems are coming under increasing pressures but this level of service should not be considered as at all acceptable.