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Written by a patient
1st April 2015


As per usual I have been on the phone this morning from 8am trying to make an urgent appointment for my daughter and yet again I have been told that there are none available as the book on the day appointments have all been taken by the doctors the day before! What is the point of book on the day, which is a crazy system anyway, if they are gone before the day begins!! We are constantly told not to waste time at A&E and to see our doctor but this is proving virtually impossible. Waiting time for an appointment is often more than two weeks which is totally unacceptable.

8th April 2015
Response from Chobham & West End Medical Practice

I checked the appointment system at 10 a.m. on the 1st April. By then the book on the day appointments had all gone but only some of them had been taken by the GPs the day before, the rest were taken on opening that morning. If a GP needs to see a patient quickly because of test results just received or some other clinical reason they will override the system and take the first available appointment. I doubt if many patients would disagree with this system. At 10 a.m. there were still medically urgent appointments available for that day, I can only presume that the urgency of the need was not relayed to the reception staff, if not I can only apologise for the oversight by the staff member concerned. I agree the waiting time for Routine appointments with your own GP is two weeks going on three at the moment. This is down to a few factors, increase in demand, movement of unfunded secondary care work into primary care, a reduction in the primary care % of the overall NHS budget from 11% to under 8% and a recruitment crisis of GPs nationally. (1/3 of all training places remain unfilled this year). The unfortunate part is that as a practice we can do very little to influence a turnaround, however as individuals we can have our say on the 7th. David Clippingdale Practice Manager

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