SHP - Shirley Medical Centre

Received a call from receptionist regarding booking a face to face video call with my sister who has downs. Explained that I could arrange to be at her flat , but not at the requested time of 09.00 as it would be too early for my sister. It was agreed that I would get a call back with a more suitable time. This was in early August and I still haven’t received the call. My sister does not have internet access or the capacity to receive the call by herself.

To try and get through to talk to anyone can take over an hour. Phone lines get jammed up really quickly. Doctors won’t see patients at all, not even using video calls. Have used the online form a couple of times and had phone conversation this takes extra time though Although it works well for prescription requests or none urgent queries . Don’t know what I’d do if I had a serious problem. Problem with phone consultation is that some doctors are difficult to understand (for tricky accents I used to lip read as well as listen). Also a doctor could miss out on lots of clues about a patients health by looking at them. I have underlying serious health conditions and I feel I have no support from my GP. The service has definitely deteriorated. I just think it can’t cope with the volume of patients in the area.

Moved practice now because this practice seems to actively shut down appointments. Everybody had to phone in the morning for appointment, and under this system obviously it's a lottery who gets phone answered.

Phone lines constantly busy as partnership has got larger. Very hard to ever get through. Have tried for over a week and heating everyone else having the same experience. No consistency with GP who sees you which makes life very difficult and frustrating with more complex medial issues.

I first tried to contact them on the 14th by telephone, to be told I was number 39 in the queue, at which point I tried their online system, but this told me that my symptoms required talking to a doctor, but did not offer that option online.

Yesterday I coughed up some blood and was prompted to try again. I tried their telephone service only to get the message this time that their call handling facility was “at capacity” and was not offered any chance to leave a message or talk to anyone at all. At this point I called 111 who after triage said they would arrange for my G.P. to call me. After about an hour, I received a text message redirecting me to the G.P.s online service. Then on attempting to use their online system, I got the response “the server has stopped responding”. This remained the case for over an hour. I sent two reply messages to the text number and some minutes later was called by a G.P.

The service provided by the G.P. was good and my condition is now being diagnosed, but the hoops I had to jump through just to contact someone I feel was unacceptable.