Northbrook Group Practice

Everything here is good and I have no complaints about booking appointments, follow ups or the communication.

If you don't call at 8:30 on the dot you cannot get an appointment. By 9am they tell you that there are no appointments are available and you need to call NHS 111. They don't even ask what your issue is, no triage at all.

It is almost impossible to book routine appointments. The receptionist would not do it face to face when I called into the surgery and said to book online or over the phone. I explained that when the surgery opened I was at work and using my phone at work to wait in a long queue was not practical or allowed. There were also no appointments available online, I had been trying for 2 weeks. I was then sent a link and after 6 days of no appointments being available there was one for the next day during working hours. This was too short notice. I returned to the surgery again and saw a different receptionist who booked me an appointment. If this had been done initially it would have saved me nearly 3 weeks of trying to book online and 3 trips to the surgery if you include the very first trip when I tried to book online on the way home one evening and was turned away.

I have made a complaint about a junior doctor here in the past and don't see her anymore. Getting an appointment is awful. They moved the online system to telephone and didn't tell us. There are no advance bookings at all and even when you do get in you see different doctors all the time. Nothing is considered long term.

My community maternity care was based here and was poor. The midwife was on long term sick leave and I saw a number of different midwives. The constant change of staff led to lack of continuity of care and I believe this resulted in complications in my pregnancy not being picked up sooner.

I was referred to Northbrook Group for physiotherapy. I waited 9 weeks to be seen and the exercises have been of no help at all.

My antenatal care was at Northbrook because my own GP surgery do not facilitate maternity care. My experience of local level/community based maternity/antenatal care was very poor.

The standard of healthcare is good, but the problem is accessing their services. It is very difficult to get appointments. They advise you to book online which I have struggled with and when I phone instead the appointments are all gone.

It is difficult to get appointments but I can usually get one eventually.

The booking system us truly awful! The online system literally doesn't work even if you get on at 8.30. Try calling, on hold for anything up to 30 mins only to be told there are no appointments and to try again tomorrow. And so the cycle starts again. They won't pre book you in for a later date either.
The doctors themselves are brilliant but appointments are like gold dust.