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Beversbrook Medical Centre
2021-05-19
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19th May 2021
Whilst I appreciate that things have had to change due to the current pandemic, I am extremely concerned about the lack of face to face consultations.
I am currently experiencing severe lower back and leg pain, which I duly reported via the Doctorlink service. The response from them was that I needed to see a doctor. When someone from Beversbrook phoned me, that was not an option that was mentioned. Indeed the only thing that was mentioned was that I would need to be referred to a Physio for assessment. This was arranged for today and guess what, it was another telephone call, where the same questions were asked and the same answers were given. The physio concluded that he will need to see me, which guess what he can’t do until next Wednesday. Yet another week of pain, but that doesn’t seem to matter. So come on Beversbrook, I know you need a triage system, but I thought that was what Doctorlink was for, the practice seems to have another internal triage system running as well. Telephone appointments are all well and good but in the case such as this they are just another time waste.
Suggested improvements
Introduce more face to face consultations
28th June 2021
Response from Beversbrook Medical Centre
I am very sorry that this has been your experience. At the time of your review we were offering a service known as total triage. More information about total triage can be found here https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Total+Triage+Youtube&docid=608034697686841555&mid=4BC495076222FBD431DD4BC495076222FBD431DD&view=detail&FORM=VIRE. We do provide a range of clinicians from Physiotherapists, Nurses, Pharmacists and other healthcare providers who work alongside the GP. This means that our patients can be seen by an appropriate clinician to meet their health needs. Total triage has been put in place to ensure that only those patients who really need to come into the Surgery are called in so as to protect any unnecessary COVID risk. This may mean that you are asked questions about your symptoms several times or that you may speak to a clinician via a remote consultation who, upon reviewing your symptoms, then wishes to see you in clinic for further review. The clinician can then decide if this is something which is urgent or can be dealt with as routine. I am sorry that you feel that this is time wasting, but I hope you can understand that we have this system in place to keep our patients safe. You will be pleased to hear that, with the easing of lockdown and the mass vaccination of patients, we have been able to relax Total Triage and are now offering more patients appointments face to face. This of course is entirely up to the patient, who can also opt for a remote consultation should they so wish to do so. I hope this assures you of our best intentions and should you wish to discuss this with me in more detail, please do not hesitate to contact me at emmybutcher@nhs.net. Once again, thank you for your feedback, which is very much appreciated. Kindest regards, Emmy Butcher - Managing Partner