Share review of Beversbrook Medical Centre

Beversbrook Medical Centre 2021-06-16 Person 0 5 0

I am a patient of Sutton Benger surgery and was always extremely satisfied with the service and standard of care. Sadly this is deteriorated over the past 1-2 years, only partially to do with the panmedic and more to do with the outsourcing to Beversbrook. On several occasions I've tried to get an appointment. It's always the same process. Try to call, can't get through. Use DoctorLink and then spent half an hour in a loop describing symptoms. Eventually, I receive a text offering me a 3 hour time slot for a telephone of video appointment. How much time do they think people who work full time have?! I don't object to a virtual appointment at all but it is not acceptable to offer such a wide timeslot, would they expect you to wait 3 hours in the surgery?! On the couple of occasions when I did get to speak to a doctor, I was able to have an adult conversation about my symptoms and the options available to me. On all the other occasions, I was palmed off to a nurse who was extremely patronising, treating me as if I was uneducated. She didn't listen. On the last occasion one month ago, after following up 3 times to visit the asthma clinic, without any kind of physical examination, she tried to put me onto a steroid inhaler. After looking into the possible side effects myself, I find it outrageous that she was able to prescribe this. I do not have serious asthma, a simple physical examination with a doctor would have made this abundantly clear. This whole system is broken and this is an example of middle management in the NHS making bad policy decisions. My case is more of an annoyance at this stage but I dread to think what would happen if I had something more serious to deal with. It wouldn't surprise me if they have a claim made against them soon for negligence. I will be raising this with my local MP and I am looking for alternative surgery to join. My local Sutton Benger practice would not have treated me this way!!! It's really sad what they have done to what used to be an excellent community surgery.

You need to overhaul your system, this is clearly not working. Not to have been offered a face-to-face appointment in 2 years for complaints that warranted it is not acceptable. You should be aware of your lack of adherence to NHS England's guidance that makes it clear that GP practices must ensure they are offering face-to-face appointments. Following Covid-19, Standard Operating Procedures for GP practices have been updated to set out that, while the expanded use of video, online and telephone consultations can be maintained, this should be done alongside a clear offer of appointments in person. It explicitly states that patients’ input into the choice of consultation method should be sought and practices should respect preferences for face-to-face care unless there are good clinical reasons to the contrary, for example Covid-19 symptoms.