Beversbrook Medical Centre

Thank you for your feedback - it is very much appreciated. I am sorry to hear that you had a long wait to see your clinician, which is regrettable but is sometimes unavoidable. Our appointments are booked in specific time slots and in some cases a patient may need a little extra time than their allocated appointment slot with their doctor or nurse, usually at times of crisis or serious illness. When this is the case it will mean that patients subsequently who are booked in will have to wait longer than is expected to be seen. I am sure you would equally appreciate the consideration and good grace of your fellow patients should you ever be in the position to require additional help and time from your own GP in future. Our Reception team do try and help by informing patients, who may have a longer than usual wait, that the clinic is running behind and will offer you a text back service, so you can carry out errands, go for a walk or pop to the shops etc and we will text you when you are next to be called. Or alternatively, we can re-arrange your appointment if you need to wait. Thankfully we very rarely have to offer this to patients as our average wait time is seven minutes. May I take this opportunity to apologise for the time you had to wait to be seen and to thank you for your patience and consideration.

Thanks for your feedback, it is much appreciated - sadly our Reception team aren't magicians but they do try their best! We do have limited emergency availability on the day, which unfortunately we are not able to provide to patients who are requesting a routine appointment as this will mean we are unable to treat the patients who need on the day assistance the most. We usually use our Doctorlink symptom checking service, to help us to ensure that patients who need more urgent treatment than the next routine appointment are given the opportunity to be seen appropriately. In future, if it is an on the day appointment you feel you need then you don't need to call us, you can use www.doctorlink.com as soon as your symptoms have started and we will contact you to make an appointment as appropriate. If you do call us, our Reception team will ask you questions so that they can help you as efficiently as possible - the more information we have the easier it is for us to be able to help you resolve your query. In some cases, this may also save you the time in attending an appointment as our team may be able to help you find a quicker resolution using your Online Services or offer signposting solutions. I hope this helps to answer your question and to assure you of our best intentions.

Hello there, many thanks for your feedback, which is much appreciated. We always like to hear the opinions of our patients, good or bad, as this gives us the opportunity to review how we are performing and, if appropriate, make improvements so that we can provide a better service for our patients. We use www.doctorlink.com to help us to allocate our on the day appointments. The developers of Doctorlink would be very interested in receiving your feedback as they are always looking to improve the complex clinical algorithms which are used to assist patients. It is unusual that Doctorlink would have suggested attending A&E for a minor symptom of itchy eyes, and I wonder if you had put in other symptoms which may have led to the recommendation you received? We would always advise that if you do have a suggestion from Doctorlink to attend A&E which you do not agree with, you should contact NHS 111 for further urgent assessment just to be on the safe side. NHS 111 will liaise with our team here at the Surgery to ensure you have an appropriate emergency appointment or will alert MIU or A&E that you are attending as appropriate. I am saddened to hear your comments about the triage nurse who you saw in clinic. Registration and qualifications of our nurses are rigorously checked by ourselves and the NMC and I can assure you that all our clinical team are trained to a high standard. I apologise that you feel this was not your experience. Our team really value feedback from our patients to help with their own continuing professional development and I would be very interested in speaking with you regarding this matter in more detail and would appreciate it if you could contact me at emmybutcher@nhs.net so that we may explore your concerns further. Kindest regards, Emmy Butcher, Managing Partner.