Dear Patient,
Thanks for leaving your feedback on the Healthwatch Lancashire website. I am disappointed to read your comments, and actually quite surprised.
Firstly, I can assure you that we do care about our patients, and it is entirely untrue that we only contact patients to invite them for vaccinations.
Secondly, I am surprised to read both that you have not had a medication review for 2 years, and that you don't feel as though you can ever get an appointment with our clinicians.
In terms of the medication review comment, we actually have a dedicated medicines management team consisting of a prescriptions co-ordinator and multiple clinical pharmacists. The team regularly identify patients who are due for medication reviews whenever repeat medication is ordered, and prescriptions are always checked before being processed. This system runs in conjunction with our chronic disease recall system which serves to invite patients who are on any chronic disease register for an annual review in their birth month. With this in mind, I cannot understand why you would not have had a medication review in 2 years. Obviously, as comments on this site are anonymous, I am not aware of your details; however, if you could please contact the surgery directly at aughtonsurgery@nhs.net and I will happily look in to this for you.
With regards to your comment about never being able to get an appointment, this again surprises me. We regularly have appointments readily available to pre-book with our own clinicians and our enhanced access service for routine problems. If your issue is more urgent, we have on the day appointments that are released at 8am every weekday morning. We also have our online consultation system that you can use between 12pm and 5pm every weekday for a response from one of the GPs. Again, I would be interested to hear what you were told by reception when you have tried to book an appointment recently. I will gladly listen to your call recordings if you can contact me directly on the email address given above.
I do hope that you feel this response addresses your feedback sufficiently, and I trust that you will be able to have a more positive experience with the surgery in the future.
Thanks,
Jack Chesters
Practice Manager Partner
