Bartley Green Medical Practice 2016-07-28 Person 1 5 0

Getting an appointment is one of the most impossible tasks ever. If you can get through on the phone then appointments are gone. Unhelpful advise like "appointments are released at various times during the day" are incredibly patronising to people who actually need an appointment. Especially beings as the office staff don't know when appointments are released. Maybe this is why you can't get through on the phone, because people are trying to find out if more appointments have been released. If you need to see a doctor over a routine illness then you can not phone up as an emergency. If you have an emergency then call 999 or go to a and e. As far as I am concerned you are encouraging more people to take their less emergency, more routine appointments to out of hours or accident and emergency, which is blocking up the system. Constructive advice... Change the system so that working parents and working people can get an appointment. If you constantly do not have appointments then don't take on new patients. You can't work cope at the capacity you have now, without getting more people. Don't write to patients asking them to make an appointment, when you don't have appointments to give. Increase phone lines, people should not have to waste a full 90 minutes trying to get through. Maybe phone lines could open earlier. Talk to patients, if you are unable to cope at the capacity you have then work out how you can solve it ! Do you need more doctors? Change working times? Hospitals have waiting times and targets, these are advertised. I think you should advertise what your targets are... If you are poorly when should you expect to be able to get an appointment... When you work in a business then you have to book your holiday in advance. Surely your doctors and nurses and receptionists could also do this, allowing for advance notice of appointments. Therefore you can book appointments in advance, don't just on the day. If you have a complaint it would be good to actually speak to the practise manager themselves, rather than them dodging the call. It is unfair that the front line staff take all the complaints and rage from the general public. When actually this is above their heads. This is a health care provision, but it is also a business and needs to be run like one. The "customers" are the public, but if they can't see one of your practitioners then you are failing.