SHP - Shirley Medical Centre

You have to be quick off the mark at 8am to get an appointment, it can be difficult. The doctors are great once you do get in.

I see the community midwife here and the care so far has been good.

My preferred doctor at Shirley Medical Centre is absolutely fabulous. He knows me well, and knows my medical history. He provides an excellent and personal experience and I cannot fault the care I have received from him. The problem is booking appointments and booking appointments with the doctor of my choice. I tried for three days calling morning and afternoon and could not get through. The phone line kept cutting me off. When I eventually did get through my concern was now more urgent, but I was told that I would not be able to see my requested doctor for over a week. Instead an appointment was made for a different SHP site.

I have been calling for 3 days to book an appointment without any success. The call queuing system is always at capacity so you can't leave a message or book an appointment and you're already number 89 in the queue at 8am. Then, after being kept on hold for ages, the call drops and you get cut off. So, after 3 days of calling the surgery, I have just been going round and around in circles without seeing anyone or getting any closer to booking a visit or an appointment being set up. SHP is now just too large with too many partnered surgeries across Solihull. It is now very cumbersome with rubbish/inefficient staff and so is falling apart and crumbling slowly. Buying up loads of GP practices without the means or management skills to properly integrate all the practices, or employing medical staff/practitioners with different ideologies or ethos' towards patient care will never work as a standard level of professionalism and empathy is required and expected from your GP, who you will have been seeing for a number of year for a variety of ailments. I have tried to endure the slow break down of the service provision by SHP but yesterday, I finally decided enough is enough and so now need to try another GP's surgery/practice, not only for my health and well being but also for my peace of mind.

I am called in for annual asthma reviews and the asthma nurse is always very good.

They are really good in terms of 1 to 1 care and the doctors are good but the phonelines are a real problem.

I have problems getting appointments and I have problems with my prescriptions. I was lucky today and managed to get an appointment, but not at my surgery. They have been helpful and rectified the problem with the repeat prescription.

I find the service at Shirley Medical Centre a nightmare. It's very hard to get an appointment. I cannot get through on the telephone. It's difficult to try and book appointments when you work, and really the whole process is down to luck.

The GPs are fine but the admin team and receptionists are utterly useless! They are rude, unprofessional, patronising and worryingly uncaring. They have lost medical records and do not listen when I explain the problem but just keep telling me to wait for results even though the results have been sent through. They also expect me to do the chasing and investigating by calling hospitals and service providers which I have done in the past out of sheer desperation to get my results. I am often stuck in limbo because they won’t pick up the phone and ask for missing information even though I have been told it has been sent to them. I don’t think they could be any worse at their jobs if they tried. It is an unacceptable service.

The doctor I saw here was good but I have struggled to contact that same doctor since.