Old Cottage Hospital Surgery

Written by a patient

Waited 10 minutes on hold to get test results......no answer.....gave up! Called again, selecting no. 2 to make an appointment......11 minutes later....still on hold!

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Written by a patient

Terrible phone service, on hold for 40 minutes and received no answer. How is it possible to book an appointment when you are on hold for so long? I do have patient access as I need to see a doctor regularly however my account had been deactivated so I was trying to hold of the old cottage to re-activate my account. Totally useless

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Written by a patient

You can tell a lot by the first impressions you get of a place. Unfortunately the first impressions here are from the receptionists who are, on the whole, rude, unwelcoming and superior, particularly Mary Simmons who I would sack in an instant if she represented my company. Surely it isn’t too much to ask for polite, professional receptionists to give off a professional first impression of such a good surgery.

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Written by a patient

It is impossible to get an appointment for weeks. You cannot get through on the phones for about half an hour in the mornings. They are always running really late. I don't know if it's a lack of staff or because they have too many patients. The new Doctorlink service is useless. You select to book an appointment and instead you get an extremely long symptom checker which most of the time, does not give you the option to book an appointment. I want to book an appointment to speak to a human, not have my symptoms assessed by a computer. It makes the whole process of trying to get an appointment even more difficult.

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Written by a carer

I rang reception on Monday two weeks ago to ask about a repeat prescription that I required, and was told they would forward this on to the doctors to sign off before I could collect from the pharmacy, (which is placed in the same building). This I have done before with a day or two before I could collect the item, which has been fine. This time I had not heard anything by the Thursday that week, and so called the pharmacy to see if they had the details of the repeat prescription. The answer was no, we don’t have this on file. So called back to the doctors surgery to ask if anything has been signed or wether it was still waiting to be signed off. I then get the answer that there is nothing showing on the system and nothing waiting to be signed by a doctor. I was then told that we don’t take repeat prescriptions over the phone and that I will have to attend reception to fill out a form myself. So off to reception I go to fill out the form and post it into the box on the wall in reception. I was then told that this will take 48 hours, so now being Thursday, that it will most probably be Monday before it gets signed off to the pharmacy if not before, due to the weekend. I then wait till Monday and call the pharmacy to see if I can collect the item required or if not have they at least got the details of the repeat prescription. I was told, no details on system for this. I am now getting frustrated and again make my way to reception to ask what is happening. I am now told the item has been signed off, but details gone to another pharmacy and not the one in the same building and that the details will need to be retrieved and sent to the right place before I can collect. It is now Wednesday the following week, I can’t get through to reception, so I ring the pharmacy in the same building, I then get though to what sounds like a fax machine for the best part of the morning. We all need great care, but I feel the systems and processes are letting this surgery down and everyone working there, as the staff are friendly enough, but all seem to be under a lot of pressure.

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