Patford House Surgery Partnership

Thank you for your feedback, which we are very grateful for. I am sorry to hear that we have not met your expectations and that you have had problems getting through on the phones. We do encourage any of our patients who can use the online systems we have put in place to do so, which keeps our phone lines free for those people who cannot use the online services. Using your Systm Online account you can message our team directly and receive a quick response. Doctorlink also provides our patients with the opportunity to check their symptoms and obtain advice day or night, without the need to wait in our call queue. Patients who complete a Doctorlink are contacted typically within 15 minutes of completing a summary of assessed needs, during working hours, to offer an appointment or obtain more information. We are aware that there are some patients who may be unable to use the internet for one reason or another. Following a digital deprivation review, we identified that the majority of our patients, including our elderly cohort have access to a smart device. However, you will be pleased to know that we have a dedicated service for our frail elderly patients including a care coordinator, home visit service with our specialist practitioner and access to our community connector who can help to obtain access to technology and assistance if required. We are also able to offer proxy access for a trusted loved one to be able to access digital platforms on behalf of the people they care for. Our patients also have the ability to attend any of our three Surgeries Reception desks for assistance. I hope this assures you of our best intention to provide quality of care to our patients and should you wish to discuss this with me or any of my team in more detail, please do not hesitate to contact me at emmybutcher@nhs.net. In the meantime, many thanks for your feedback. Kindest regards - Emmy Butcher, Managing Partner PHP

Thank you for your feedback and I am sorry to hear that we have been unable to meet your expectations. At present we offer patients remote consultations and I presume that this was what had been arranged for you with our diabetic nurse. We do prefer that patients are available for their appointment, this is difficult if you are driving and I appreciate that this made the consultation ineffective. We can offer patients timed appointments for remote consultations or the ability to come into the Surgery. Unfortunately, due to the workload of our clinicians we can't guarantee that they will have time to call you back if you are unable to take the call in your allocated time frame and I can appreciate how frustrating this is. I would welcome the opportunity to speak to you further to help understand the situation in more detail so I can investigate with the team and look to make improvements. Your feedback is invaluable to assisting us with this. If you are agreeable my details are emmybutcher@nhs.net and I hope to hear from you soon. In the meantime, thanks once again for your feedback and I hope we can improve your future experiences with our service. Kindest regards Emmy Butcher - Managing Partner

I am sorry to hear that this is your experience and thank you for your feedback regarding the care you have received. I can assure you that we have measures in place to assist those who are not confident on using our online platforms and I can only apologise that this was not discussed with you or your mother upon contacting our service. Doctorlink is an easy way to check symptoms for yourself or for someone else. It is not something we insist on our patients using to obtain an appointment, but it does help us to make sure that patients who need more urgent assessment than our next available routine appointment are safely triaged and prioritised accordingly. You may be interested to know that we also have a specialist service for our elderly patients, including a specialist practitioner (Paramedic) who can offer a home visit service, our Care Coordinators - who can assist our elderly patients in communicating their care and liaising with their GP and also a Community Connector, who can help patients get community confidence in all things such as group activities and even assist in obtaining laptops and IT help to become internet confident. In addition, our online platforms can be provided with Proxy access, so that patients who rely on their trusted friends and loved ones to help them to access our online services can do so easily. Doctorlink for example can be completed on behalf of someone else, completing a Doctorlink summary for your Mother from your own account is simple and easy and we would be happy to talk you through this if it is helpful in the future. I hope this assures you of our best intentions but should you wish to discuss this matter or any other in more detail, please do not hesitate to contact me at emmybutcher@nhs.net, I would very much welcome your feedback. With very kindest regards, Emmy Butcher - Managing Partner