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Written by a patient
13th July 2019


I have always loved Patford House Surgery but recently something has changed. It’s virtually impossible to get an appointment nowadays unless you can dedicate over half an hour from 8.40am in the morning to wait on an endlessly ringing phone line with no idea of where you are in the queue. This is completely unhelpful to people who work or have to get children to school. The end result is it has put me off trying to get an appointment and I believe my health has suffered as a result. It’s also such a shame that the stalwart GPs are either retiring or not often available at Patford House as they are being replaced by other locums who don’t seem to share the original ethos.

24th July 2019
Response from Patford House Surgery Partnership

Hello there, thanks for this feedback it really is super helpful and I am sorry to hear that this is your experience. You will be pleased to know that we are currently reviewing these areas and are using our online platforms such as Doctorlink and Systm Online to help us to build more capacity for appointments for both on the day appointments and routine appointments. We are also currently looking at our telephone system so that we can increase the number of incoming calls, meaning our patients won't have to wait quite so long on the phone during busy periods. We equally feel sad that some of our GPs are retiring, we will miss them but are grateful for the years of service they have provided to the Practice and to Primary Care throughout their careers. We appreciate that when we have a change in clinicians this can be disruptive for our patients. You may be interested to know that we are recruiting at present and are looking at innovative ways we can provide continuity of care and ease of access to our patients in the meantime. We have also introduced lots of new roles into the Partnership to help relieve the workload burden on our existing workforce and have employed the skills of a range of health care professionals such as Pharmacists, our first contact Physio and our Specialist Practitioner who is a serving Paramedic, to help us provide our patients with the best possible care whist working alongside your GP. We hope that this will help us to reduce the number of locum doctors we need in Practice and help to maintain the high standards and quality of care we strive to foster here in all our PHP Practices. I hope that this helps you to understand the measures we are taking to address your concerns and I really am grateful for your feedback. If you would like to know more information or would like to discuss this with me further please do not hesitate to get in touch via emmybutcher@nhs.net. With many thanks once again - Emmy Butcher, Managing Partner

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