Steyning Medical Practice

We were very sad to read your feedback and were sorry to hear that our service has not been a positive experience for yourself and your daughter. Our clinicians and staff are dedicated to giving the best care for all our patients and work very hard to ensure that we work safely and follow the required guidelines. We were sorry that you are now leaving the practice and would be happy to discuss any individual issues if you felt able to share these with us. We welcome the opportunity for patients to share their experiences which enable us to develop and improve our learning. We changed our appointment system some time ago to ensure that we are meeting the needs of patients as much as is possible. We have a duty team who help any patients who need to have urgent or same day advice through a telephone triage system. This ensures that patients who need to be seen quickly are given priority and those who can be given telephone advice are saved a visit to the practice. Our system allows patients who need to be seen for a follow up by a doctor (for example after blood tests or x-rays, medication trials etc) are able to access appointments easily so that we can find a convenient time and date wherever possible. Routine appointments are released each day for patients who have a new problem or who are coming back with an existing problem but are not been followed up regularly. Any patient who feels their symptoms cannot wait until the next available routine appointment is invited to have a telephone consultation with a GP if that is appropriate, or to speak to a member of the duty team who will ensure an appropriate appointment is allocated. We keep reviewing our systems to try and meet patients' needs and to help our patients access healthcare safely and appropriately. We will continue to work hard as a practice to ensure that we monitor our access for patients and that those patients who need to be seen are given the highest quality medical care.

Thank you for taking the time to give feedback on our service. It is always nice to hear when things are going well. Our staff work extremely hard to give the best possible service to our patients. It is lovely for the staff to hear positive comments, especially with the pressures we often experience. Many thanks.

Thank you for your feedback and we were sorry to hear that you had a long wait for the doctor. Unfortunately doctors don't always know how long a patient may need when they book to see a doctor. Our appointments are 10 minutes long but sometimes a patient may come with more than one problem, or have something they wish to discuss which needs a little longer. We ask patients ask for a double appointment if they think they may need longer, but sometimes things develop during a consultation which are unforeseen. We aim to give all our patients the best possible care and our doctors try to keep to time as much as they can. Our reception team do try to keep an eye on how doctors are getting along during their session and often announce to the waiting room that a doctor is delayed if there is longer than a 30 min wait. However, we recognise that it is sometimes uncomfortable for patients who are waiting a long time. We will discuss this at our next team meeting to see if we can improve on our communication with waiting patients. Thank you again for bringing this to our attention.

I was very sorry to read your comments. To enable us to address your specific concerns, it would be useful if you could get in touch with us. Our staff are committed to providing our patients the best possible service. If a patient has had a negative experience, we will discuss this as part of a learning process to enable us to improve further. If you feel able to share your experience with us, please contact Jenny Smith, Assistant Practice Manager, or write to Dr Alex Rainbow directly who is our Complaints Lead. Many thanks.

Thank you for your feedback. We have had some new reception staff start with us recently who we hope will be a positive addition to our team. Please do get in touch if you have any specific concerns.