A REDDITCH pensioner has hit out after being told he can’t have a doctor’s appointment for eight weeks.
The senior citizen called the Elgar House Surgery in the town centre last week after feeling under the weather and to his astonishment was told he would have to wait until November 8 to be seen by a medic.
“They said they’d brought in a new system and the only way to get an appointment sooner was to try and call at 8.45am and you might get pot luck if there had been a cancellation,” said the pensioner.
“I said there was no way I could wait until November 8 and if that was the case I would have to go down to the Alexandra Hospital and the lady on reception said ‘that’s fine’.
“I think it is absolutely outrageous. I don’t want to be too harsh on the doctors because they’ve been brilliant to me over the years but I think they’ve lost sight of what the NHS is all about – we’re the patients, we don’t go there for fun, we go there because we’re ill and we need help.
Problems
“It’s not as if being seen at the hospital is easy as they have their own problems and they won’t thank me for turning up and adding to them.”
In the end the pensioner, a patient at Elgar House for 35 years, rang the Alex on Monday and asked if it was all right for him to come down.
“The nurse was fantastic, she said ‘don’t worry, we’ll look after you’ and when I got there they were all smiles and I was out within an hour.
“I honestly don’t know what Elgar House will do come November when people, especially the elderly are all falling ill.”
A spokesperson for the surgery, said: “Elgar House Surgery has been inspected along with all other GP practices by the Care Quality Commission and found to be providing a service which is good or excellent in all areas. We endeavour to provide a timely service to all our patients.
“We do not have the capacity to offer immediate appointments to all our patients. When offering consultations, we try to match availability to clinical need as far as we are able.
“We have an emergency clinic every afternoon for patients who need to be seen urgently on the same day and have always operated a policy of never turning away any patient who requests this type of appointment.
“If a breakdown of this policy has been identified we would welcome the opportunity to explore how this has occurred to rectify the problem and prevent a recurrence.”
