Reply from Widcombe Surgery
Tue, 03 Sep 2019 11:13:59 +0100

Thank you for your feedback, which we're always grateful to receive - and it's particularly good to hear that the staff are friendly and helpful. I'm surprised that you have had problems with the phone this morning, because it's been a fairly quiet morning and nobody else seems to have mentioned a problem. We are installing a new telephone system in October, which will hopefully resolve any future problems - albeit there is a limit to how many incoming lines we can answer at any one time, and there are times when it's difficult to get through because of demand - which is particularly first thing in the morning. Most patients don't feel that Open Surgery is a waste of time - we're one of the very few surgeries in the area that offer such a service, and it's hugely popular with patients. Again that can cause problems with demand and it's impossible on a day to day basis to know how many patients will want to use the service - and patients can on occasions wait for an hour. However, we had 3 clinicians seeing open surgery patients this morning so waiting times were not that long. It is important for all patients to be aware that Open Surgery is for emergency appointments and that does sometimes cause problems because not all patients have problems that can't wait for the next routine appointment. Our next routine appointment if you'd have wanted to take that option would have been 8 days from today. That's a very reasonable waiting time for non-urgent problems - and patients who do work do prefer that option. All appointments are for just 10 minutes - there are times when because of the complexity of patient's problems that appointments take longer than 10 minutes - and we are very aware that all patients need to be prepared to wait on occasions when their appointment is with a doctor who is running late. We ask for the understanding and support of all of our patients on these occasions. I hope I can assure you that we are constantly reviewing and monitoring our appointment systems, availability and waiting times - and hope that we are responsive and doing our best to provide a high level of service to all patients.