Unable to send form to request help either at the weekend and now during half of the working week! I work at the main hospital and we have no such restrictions in place despite being continually short-staffed. No wonder GP practices have got such a poor reputation now. People who work are unable to complete the forms during the restricted hours offered and so will no doubt be adding to the long queue to speak to someone at the practice instead. What terrible service for working local people.
Submitted by Collected by Healthwatch Norfolk staff26th April 2022
I've been a patient at Postmill for 64 years but I feel like they do not seem interested in older people especially if they are not online. My friends get a better service than me because they are online but I shouldn't be penalised for not being online.
The Drs always seem busy. I had a recent experience where I had to stay in hospital and have not been contacted afterwards by the surgery. My son managed to get me a visit but the nurse who visited didn't explain much to me just said it was nothing to worry about. Reception can be rude and ignore you when you walk in. I haven't seen my own GP for over 3 years.
This surgery has an online form to use to request help or appointment, which generally works well for non urgent health matters. However today I find they have restricted when you can submit the form to certain hours only. This makes it very difficult for people who work to fill the form in, as the only times it is available is daytime weekdays and on some weekdays only for a few hours. Not everyone is able to take time out of work or their commuting journeys to fill in the forms. I dont get why you stop people submitting forms in the evenings. You will still get the same number of people needing help, so this restriction achieves nothing except annoying patients.
I'd also add the last time I visited the surgery the receptionist was very rude and off with us, despite the fact the only reason we arrived later than booked for our appointment was because the surgery texted me to ask us to come in later as the GP had an urgent home visit to do.
If you get to talk to or see a clinician they are mostly good but it's very hard to access.
I know they are short staffed with too many patients due to house building in the area but I can't give a better rating at the moment.
When recently at surgery was advised if my wound needed stitches then I would have to go to hospital as no-one was able to do stitches at the practice, poor show considering the size of practice and number or people on the books.
I’ve been struggling to get help for months. Never have continuity with who I see/speak to. They now don’t book phone appointments - you randomly get called when someone decides to call! So you cannot plan to be free for a telephone appointment as you won’t know when it’s going to be. That’s a shockingly bad system in terms of organisation; I’ve missed a few calls from doctors because of this. I’m getting unwanted texts about covid vaccines daily. Due to vaccine injury (and struggling to get help from doctors for it for months now! No one seems to listen or do anything!) I will not be able to have more. I asked the surgery if I could be taken off the list for receiving these notifications and was laughed at!! Was told “we have no control over that”. Fed up with all of this.
May I suggest that in these difficult times of Covid, it is not a great idea to continue with the policy of disabling the re ordering of medication online when it comes up for review.
Although I fully understand that tablets should be reviewed on a regular basis, disabling the re ordering until a review has taken place, can quite easily plunge the patient into a situation where tablets they have been taking safely and without any problems for years are suddenly halted.
There may be many reasons why a patient cannot get to a review on time or at all. This could be easily sorted out over time without the drastic measure of simply making the essential tablets unavailable, as if to say “well if you do not come for the review, you are not getting your tablets” Surely the continuation of what in most cases are long term non lethal essential prescriptions, such as for Blood pressure, the continuation of the medication under most circumstances , is far more important than the review, which at least can be sorted out at a later date.
Apologies for the length of this but it brings me to another point of the review. I posted this here because I could not find any place on the web site to post it.
I have always found WMC to be very good, in most respects. But the above prescriptions issue is intensely annoying, and seemingly, easily avoidable, in these trying times.
Took a week for someone to respond to my appointment request - no longer need it now as it took so long!
After queueing for over half an hour to collect my prescription, I was told they didn't have it. When I said I had requested it last week, the lady said the surgery hadn't processed it until yesterday!! She also said that some prescriptions get sent to a hub rather than directly to them and mine was one of them. Would've been helpful if someone from the surgery let me know that they wouldn't have my prescription on time and sort out an emergency one rather than being turned away with no medication!
There is so much criticism of GPs at the moment and when I hear this I just feel that people fail to understand the pressures that GP surgeries are currently absorbing. Despite these pressures my own surgery is doing an astounding job. I feel the access is a real improvement. We have all received any care we needed in an appropriate manner. We understand that we do not need to be seen face to face but when that has been clinically needed it has happened. Staff are always polite and caring. The site is clean, processes are clear and I know what is expected of me. Everything is so well done even under the hardest circumstances.
Reply from Wymondham Medical Partnership
Thank you for your response and rating. We aim to be as effective and efficient as possible and we do appreciate positive feedback.
Poor Covid Booster Service
1
Submitted by Anonymous13th October 2021
Received a text asking me to book online for covid booster, attached link to site did not work, after cutting and pasting into another browser managed to get site to work but for the past 7 days there have been no appointments at any of the three sites offered. Tried calling the number provided, requested to leave a message, that was 4 days ago still no reply.
Reply from Wymondham Medical Partnership
Unfortunately the national booking service is not run by Wymondham Medical Partnership, our messages will state to book at our site and offer a dedicated phone number. The message you rate didn\'t come from us as you mention 3 sites available.