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Written by a carer
25th January 2019


I Need to pass on my FACTUAL feedback in regards to booking an EMERGENCY appointment over the phone at Studholme. this needs to be loked at the people within this surgery and NOT removed for others to see what happened in my familys case. Several times as a last resort after exhasuting all over the counter medicines, my family and I have had cause to make an emergency appointment to see a doctor for my wife and youngest son (who is under 3), their last appointments at this surgery were several years ago when they were last GENUINELY sick, on the most recent occasion 24/01/18 trying to get through thier taxpayer funded telephone system at 0800hrs is a nightmare, eventually after getting loads of disconnections and then in queuing system, i was told that no appointments are available, when i tried to question this i get DISCONNECTED from their side. Fuming, i have no option but to goto the surgery in person, when i get there at 0812hrs 25/01/19, the surgey waiting area is completley empty, i am eventually approached by a member of reception and when i ask for the name of the person who hung up on me, i am told that there is a problem with their telephone system ?! Really!! thats convinient After a bit of to and fro i eventually get a doctor call back promise from reception for my youngest son who the day before for a emegency appointment was given a LEAFLET, my wife who is also very sick is asked to try to call back at 1300hrs with no other promises made, i would like Studholme to know, for very infrequent patients like my family who only ever approach you in extreme cases, giving a leaflet is NOT going to make me family better, my youngest has not selpt or eaten for almost 4 days, vomiting up all his insides at 3am or other random times cant be fixed by one of your leaflets, we have tried all the regular over the counter meds and they DO NOT WORK, why should my son or any of our family have to go through such pain and just be brandished with a leaflet ! NB.This is not the way to treat human beings let alone taxpayers like myself who on those rare occasions have to use the health system, its our taxes that keep you going! You dont want patients being rude or abusive to you, so why would you be like that to your patients. Have a HEART !

20th February 2019
Response from Studholme Medical Centre

Dear Carer We are sorry to hear about your concerns on Friday 25th Jan. Some of the issues you mention are not within our control, and other statements we believe do not fairly reflect the circumstances. The Practice has invested significantly into a new onsite telephone exchange which has been very well received by our patients. This includes features like call waiting so patients know where they are within the telephone queue. We receive hundreds of phone calls each week and a small percentage of these do disconnect which is not due to our staff. We have asked our phone supplier to investigate this however we are informed that this is not unusual for a very small number of calls to disconnect especially if calls are received from mobile phones. This is often due to the signal strength of the patients mobile network and not related to our phone system. Both your son and wife’s names were added to our same day triage service and within 2 hours of the phone call with the doctor they were asked to attend the Practice. Viral infections do not respond to antibiotics; hence a patient information leaflet is given to provide further information to help patients. We note they haven’t re-attended the surgery or elsewhere (we would be sent notification of such attendance) hence we believe that the correct diagnoses was given. Although medicine has progressed, unfortunately there are some conditions for which there is only symptom relief for example with viral management. Often time is required and there is no instant cure for such conditions. The frequency with which people attend the surgery doesn't affect access or the care that is received. Even if you only visit the surgery infrequently that within itself does not mean you would have a higher priority when you do visit the surgery versus any other patient. We hope you family is now feeling better, Thank you SMC.

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