Meon Health Practice - Ratings and reviews
Reviews
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Review titled Absolute joke
Rated 1 star out of 5
by Femi Adeniran - Posted on 12 April 2024
Wanted to get an appointment regarding symptoms which the NHS says must be seen by a doctor. At 8am (the alleged time one must call or use the app) I did both and was told there are no appointments. Went to the surgery and the receptionist was incredibly rude and arrogant. To be fair to her she is probably sick of people telling her that the system doesn’t work…..but the system doesn’t work. These people made my wife cry several years ago when the wouldn’t give our son his vaccinations for various ridiculous reasons. Contender for the worst surgery in the world.
Visited April 2024
Review titled Meon Health Practice
Replied on 15 April 2024
Dear Femi Adeniran, Many thanks for your time providing this feedback and we are sorry we have not met your expectations. Regarding concerns of appointments, we work extremely hard every day to see as many patients as we can, and while we do not have the capacity to see everyone, we will always ensure we see those who require urgent advice. Last month (March) we held over 16,200 consultations with over 5,300 arranged through our daily triage. Included in this were over 1,000 routine appointments. This is in addition to clinical admin work (e.g., prescriptions, test results, requests from Hospitals and other queries). Many of the other 10,900 appointments are booked via NHSApp (e.g., smears and blood tests), self-booking links (for health reviews) or when follow up is needed. With our same day triage, although you may need to contact us on multiple days, this is typically sooner and safer than asking patients to wait up to six weeks for a non-urgent appointment. To support patients and staff, we review our capacity through the day to ensure we can give same day care to those who need us most after our appointment book is ‘full’. As part of improving how to contact us, we introduced ‘anima’ in February but while this should improve how to contact us, anima is not increasing our capacity and when our appointment book is full you will not be able to get medical help online. Medical requests are generally available via anima from 8am Monday to Friday and you can always contact us for urgent problems by telephone or in person. We cannot confirm if your request would have met our urgent criteria, and we apologise if our receptionist was rude to you for this request. If you’d like for us to investigate this formally, you can request this by: 1. Completing a complaints form at reception 2. Completing a feedback form online: Feedback & Complaints - Meon Health Practice 3. By letter to Complaints c/o 102 Highlands, Fareham, PO15 6JF 4. By telephone Regarding concerns of vaccinations, we follow strict clinical guidance on eligibility and while we trust our staff instructed you and your wife correctly, we apologise if the guidance we follow caused any upset to your family. Regarding your opinion we are a contender for the worst surgery in the world, last month (March) we received 730 patients’ responses via the NHS Family and Friends feedback with 89% patients rating their experience as very good or good, but we apologise again we have not met your expectations as our patient. Thank you again for sharing your feedback. We believe all feedback helps us to deliver an improved service in future. Yours sincerely, James Leach Patient Service Manager
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Review titled Just Appaling
Rated 1 star out of 5
by Sue Parsons - Posted on 07 March 2024
The service from this group beggars belief. I don't need an appointment just some medical advice about the long-term pain relief I take for a chronic problem. I have tried now for a week to just get through to the surgery. At 8 am it is like tactical warfare. If you go to the surgery, the queue around the block is so bad they have now started to provide chairs! The phones are jammed, if you do get through you can be 32 in the queue with a good 40-minute wait to talk to a person only to be told to try again tomorrow I am retired. god help you if you work. The new swanky online system has an option to "Ask your Dr a Question". It is permanently greyed out so useless. why have it if you are not going to use it??? I hand-delivered a letter to the surgery but when I got no reply, the receptionist admitted they had lost it. 111 have been brilliant but cannot help me and refers me back to the joke that is our surgery. I do not need Casualty. Local Pharmacist is swamped by taking on duties that a Dr should be doing. At my sister's Surgery in Berkshire, she can book a routine appointment and can see someone within 2 days without the triage system, Why can't we? I have a condition that needs physically looking at, a phone call is no good. Last year you were voted the 8th worst Practice in the United Kingdom You seem to have done nothing to improve that. This morning was the last straw. In the post, I received a surgery notification to come for a smear test and a blood test. if you have time to chase me for things I don't have symptoms of why can't I see someone or even talk to someone for symptoms I do have.?. This practice group is severely failing the population that it reportedly serves. Just Appalling.
Visited March 2024
Review titled Meon Health Practice
Replied on 08 March 2024
Dear Sue Parsons, Many thanks for taking your time to provide this feedback and we are sorry to read we have not met your expectations. Regarding difficulty contacting the Practice for medical advice, telephone wait times continue to be one of our top priorities and to sustain improvements made to telephone access, we introduced a new website with better digital access using ‘anima’ in February ‘24. As well improving digital access, we continue recruitment and training of staff to support the telephones where possible, but our lines are busiest first thing at 8am despite staff doing their best to respond to patients. Please be aware while anima improves online access for patients who can use the internet, reducing demand on telephones and in person contacts, anima does not increase our clinical staffing. We work very hard to offer as many appointments as we can, but we, like all GP surgeries, do not have the clinical capacity to see everyone despite employing 2 new salaried GPs in August ‘23. Last month (February) the Practice held over 19,300 consultations with over 5,700 arranged through our daily GP-led triage. Included in this were over 1,100 routine and over 2,500 face-to-face appointments. This is in addition to all administrative clinical work (e.g., prescriptions, test results, Hospital requests and patient queries). We operate a same day GP-led Triage service and, depending on clinical staffing, we offer as many ‘routine’ appointments as possible each day before we reach ‘safe’ capacity. With a same day service, although you may need to contact us on consecutive days before getting a ‘routine’ appointment, this is typically a sooner and safer pathway than the alternative in asking patients to wait up to six weeks for an appointment. Regarding reference to data from last year, we believe you refer to NHS patient feedback which was made public in the summer of '23 and was taken up to and including January '23. To reassure you of improvements made, our most recent and publicly available February '24 NHS Family and Friends feedback returned over 92% of our patients responses being either ‘good’ or ‘very good’. This displays we do deliver a service that meets many patients needs and is confirmed as consistent as this same monthly feedback is recorded at 89% or higher since June '23. As well as improvements show by patient feedback, and to reassure you of appointment processes, our 2023 appointment data shows our triage system increased patient appointment requests by more than 2,200 consultations, more than doubled face-to-face appointments, and increased routine access compared to the same '22 appointment data. We appreciate this is not the service you experienced in the examples you have contacted us about, but we trust this reassures you we will deliver an improved service in future. Thank you once again for your feedback and for being a part of our practice. Kind regards, James Leach Patient Service Manager
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Review titled Waiting time
Rated 1 star out of 5
by Pal Opanszki - Posted on 13 March 2024
I'm waiting on a call back from the doctor, since May 2023, I think i'm patient enough. Never seen the same person behind the reception desk twice, and i'm been there a few times in the past 10 months. Absolutely unacceptable in my opinion.
Visited March 2024
Review titled Meon Health Practice
Replied on 14 March 2024
Dear Mr Opanszki, Many thanks for taking your time to provide this feedback and we are very sorry to read we have not met your expectations as our patient. Having checked your records we discovered there was an appointment booked for the follow up you were expecting in May 2023 which was missed by our team. Please accept our apologies that this follow up appointment was missed. We have booked you a new appointment to discuss your clinical needs with our clinician and have sent you the appointment details directly to you for your reference. We trust this information is helpful and reassures you that we wish to make amends and provide you with the support you need in your recent contact to us chasing this missed appointment from May 2023. Regarding your feedback of our reception staff changing, we do have three surgeries at Whiteley, Highlands, and Jubilee, and all of our front desk team rotate sites as well as their various working time patterns. Our reception team also have various responsibilities in their roles as Patient Service Advisors which require them to work on the telephones, our triage appointment booking team, and other admin duties which would requires our staff to work in the 'back office' rather than patient facing roles at the front desks. Thank you again for taking your time to share your feedback and for being our patient. We believe this will help us to deliver an improved service in future. Kind regards, James Leach Patient Service Manager
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Review titled Completely pointless as a GP.
Rated 1 star out of 5
by Anonymous - Posted on 13 March 2024
Don't even bother wasting your time either phoning or standing in the queue at 8am in the morning. Tried phoning last week and listened to the awful message that they have playing, with the countdown which seems to go up and down. Waited for 20 odd minutes to be told that my call would be answered in 8 minutes. the next message told me the wait time was over 40 minutes. When I finally got through, I was told that you have to queue at 8am. Then you're told that you not ill enough to have an appointment. (Not sure how that assessment can be made without being examined). So back down to Gosport War Memorial I will go, to be told that I need to see my GP. What a mess.
Visited March 2024
Review titled Meon Health Practice
Replied on 02 April 2024
Dear Patient, Many thanks for providing feedback with difficulties to request a routine appointment in March and we are sorry we have not met your expectations. Regarding the telephone systems, we changed our queue waiting information towards the end of 2023 after a patient survey confirmed most of our patients preferred an estimated wait time rather than a specific queue position. Following feedback from patients after this change was made, we recently reverted the queue waiting information to a specific queue position as we try to act in the best interests of our patients and have listened to patient feedback on both occasions when making these decisions. Our availability is also pre-recorded and updated daily to confirm to callers in the queue when our GP appointment book is full to reduce the need to wait in the queue only to be told this information by our staff on connection. Regarding availability to appointments, we work very hard every day to offer as many appointments as we can, but we, like all GP surgeries, do not have the clinical staffing to see everyone. Last month (March) the Practice held over 16,200 consultations with over 5,300 arranged through our daily GP-led triage. Included in this were over 1,000 routine and over 2,300 face-to-face appointments. This is in addition to clinical admin work (e.g., prescriptions, test results, requests from Hospitals and other queries). Many of the other 10,900 appointments are booked via NHSApp (e.g., smears and blood tests), self-booking links (for health reviews) or when follow up is needed. With a same day system, although you may need to contact us on consecutive days before requesting a GP appointment, this is typically a sooner and safer pathway than asking patients to wait up to six weeks for an appointment. To reassure you of our Total Triage, our 2023 data shows we increased access by more than 2,200 consultations, more than doubled face-to-face appointments, and increased routine access compared to the 2022 data. Regarding the options to phone or visit us in person at 8am to request an appointment, and to continue improvements made to contact us, we recently introduced a new website with online medical requests using ‘anima’ in February. Please be aware while anima will improve how to contact us, anima is not increasing our staffing and once our GP appointment book is full the online portal will also be full. Medical requests are generally available via anima from 8am Monday to Friday and you can always contact us for urgent medical problems by telephone or in person. We understand how frustrating it is when you can’t be seen for a ‘routine’ problem, and when you try to contact us at peak times, but please be patient and kind with our staff while we try and process the demand on our service. Thank you again for taking your time to share your feedback. We believe all feedback helps us to deliver an improved service in future. Yours sincerely, James Leach Patient Service Manager
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Review titled Can't get an appointment to actually see someone
Rated 1 star out of 5
by Anonymous - Posted on 26 February 2024
Repeatedly Call doctors from 8 Get through at 8.40 On hold till 9.30 [Whilst doing morning family/work routine!] All routine appts booked with emergencies Only accept 'in the day' needs (otherwise you have to hang up and do this every day, until you get through, before those appts are full!) Triaged, await a call back, to confirm appt. Exhausted. And you expect unwell people to go through that.
Visited February 2024
Review titled Meon Health Practice
Replied on 27 February 2024
Dear Patient, Many thanks for taking your time to provide this feedback. Regarding concerns of limited appointments, we work very hard to offer as many appointments as we can, but like all surgeries we are unable to offer as many appointments as we would like, and to meet patient demand. Last month (January) the Practice held over 20,900 consultations with over 6,300 arranged through our daily GP-led triage. Included in this were over 1,400 routine and over 2,600 face-to-face appointments. This is additional to administrative clinical work (e.g., prescriptions, test results, requests from Hospitals and other patient queries). Many of the other 14,000 appointments are booked online via the NHSApp (e.g., smears and blood tests), using self-booking links (for example annual health reviews) or when a follow up is needed. With a ‘same day’ service, although you may need to contact us on consecutive days before getting a ‘routine’ appointment, this is typically a much sooner and safer pathway than the alternative in asking patients to wait up to six weeks for a ‘routine’ appointment. It is also important to highlight at times our clinical staff can be required to work beyond the recommended ‘safe’ levels to meet patient demand, and we must consider their health and well-being, as well as that of our patients. To reassure you of our process and improvements made, our 2023 appointment data shows this triage system increased our service by more than 2,200 consultations, more than doubled our face-to-face appointments, and increased our routine offering compared to the previous year. Regarding difficulty contacting the Practice, we recently introduced a new website which includes better digital access using an online system called ‘anima’, which allows a digital route into the Practice and reduces the need for patients to call on the telephone. This is as well as ongoing recruitment of telephone staff and training other admin teams to support the telephones where possible, but our phone lines are of course busiest first thing at 8am despite our staff doing their best to help patients as quickly as possible. Our access status is also pre-recorded and updated daily to confirm if our ‘routine’ appointment book is ‘full’ to avoid frustrations of holding for any length of time only to be told there are no ‘routine’ appointments available on that day due to safe capacity being reached. Where possible we may advise patients to use https://111.nhs.uk/ to help manage minor medical problems, as many minor ailments are easily treated at home or with advice from your local pharmacist. We understand how frustrating it is when you can’t get an appointment for a ‘routine’ problem, but please be as patient and kind with our staff while we continue to try and process the demands on our services. We trust this information is helpful and we believe this will help us to deliver an improved service in future. Kind regards, James Leach Patient Service Manager
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Review titled Ludicrous
Rated 1 star out of 5
by Warren Robert Gary Dempster - Posted on 27 December 2023
This practice is an absolute joke, I have just called to make an appointment only to be told "we don't do that anymore", I was told to call at 8am on the day that I want to attend and hope they have space!! I work for a living and am not allowed to carry my phone with me, and don't have access to landlines during the day so I have no chance. I have now registered with a different surgery, a surgery that makes Doctor's appointments.
Visited December 2023
Review titled Meon Health Practice
Replied on 27 December 2023
Dear Warren Dempster, Many thanks for taking your time to provide this feedback. We are sorry to read your concerns of appointment access because we are working very hard to offer as many appointments as we can, but we, like all GP surgeries, sadly do not have the clinical capacity to see everyone when they feel the need to be seen. Despite employing 2 new GP’s in August, we are unable to fulfil as many appointments as we would like and apologise this has led to your decision of leaving the Practice. Last month (November) the practice held over 17,000 consultations of which over 5,900 were through our daily triage on the same day they were requested, which is in addition to any administrative work the clinical teams did – for example signing prescriptions, reading results, actioning requests from Hospitals and responding to patient queries. Included in this number were over 1,300 routine appointments and over 2,200 being face to face. The majority of the other 11,000 appointments are booked online via the NHSApp (e.g., smears and blood tests), via self-book links (annual reviews) or when a follow up is needed (e.g., further GP or Nurse appt). We are offering a same day GP Triage service and with the nature of a same day service, we ask patients to contact us on the day they are available. Although you may need to contact us more than once before getting a ‘routine’ appointment, this is typically a much sooner and safer pathway than booking appointments at first contact and asking patients to wait up to six weeks for a ‘routine’ appointment. It is also important to highlight all clinical staff can be required to work beyond the recommended levels in order to meet patient demands, and we must consider their health and well-being, as well as the care of our patients. Regarding concerns of contacting the Practice, we continue to focus on our telephone service to maintain the improvements we have made with planned introduction of a new website and digital access in line with this. Our reception staff work extremely hard to help our patients and last month (November) our team responded to over 9,000 calls with the longest average wait of 16 minutes and average queue position of 11 during peak hours which is a significant improvement on our figures last year, but our phone lines are of course busiest first thing at 8am. Our access status is also pre-recorded on our telephones, and updated daily, and at the time of writing we have confirmed to callers our ‘routine’ appointment book is ‘full’ due to the 3 working day week after Christmas and Boxing Day, as well as planned and unplanned clinical absences. We hope you find a service that meets your expectations at your new Practice, and are sorry you have decided this experience led to you leaving our services. Kind regards, James Leach Patient Service Manager Meon Health Practice
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Review titled Outstanding care and service from all at Whiteley.
Rated 5 stars out of 5
by Richard Thresher - Posted on 13 November 2023
I have been registered at the surgery for nearly ten years and always have received very good care. This week I attended the surgery not knowing quite how ill I was. If it hadn't been for the incredible doctor throughly examining me and seeing red flags, I fear I may of been in big trouble. Emergency treatment was arranged for me in hospital immediately and I am now recovering thanks to her amazing care. From the reception team, to all the nurses and doctors, everyone has shown me kindness, professionalism and provided help and support. I genuinely cannot thank them enough.
Visited November 2023
Review titled Meon Health Practice
Replied on 06 December 2023
Dear Richard Thresher, Thank you for taking the time to share this five star feedback with us. We are delighted to read that you have received very good care from the surgery over the ten years you have been with us! We have already passed on your kind words to the reception team, nurses, and doctors for the level of care and kindness we provided, and we are all truly thankful for your recognition. We wish you a continued recovery following your emergency admission and thank you again for your time in writing this review. Kind regards, James Leach Patient Service Manager
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Review titled over subscribed practice .
Rated 1 star out of 5
by Anonymous - Posted on 06 November 2023
Unacceptable time to have to wait for an appointment. Have been in a queue to make an appointment for over 60 minutes. Exceptionally poor quality service!
Visited November 2023
Review titled Meon Health Practice
Replied on 06 December 2023
Dear Patient, Many thanks for taking your time to provide this feedback. Regarding concerns of difficulty contacting the Practice and long waiting times, our telephone wait times have been one of our top priorities and we share our improvements and service information in our recent newsletters. You can sign up to our Patient Newsletter on our website: https://www.thehighlandspractice.co.uk/navigator/patient-participation-and-focus-groups/ We continue to focus on our telephone service to maintain the improvements we have made with planned introduction of a new website and better digital access to address the need to improve further and increase our patient service and experience. We also maintain our recruitment of new team members to improve our response times, as well as training other administrative teams to enable support where possible, to sustain the improvements we are making for our patients experience and care. Last month (November) and currently in December, our teams are experiencing unexpectedly high levels of absence. Despite operating at lower levels of staffing, we responded to over 9,000 calls with the longest average wait time of 16 minutes and an average queue position of 11 during peak hours which is a significant improvement on our figures towards the end of last year, but our phone lines are of course busiest first thing at 8am and we do our best to respond to patients as quickly as possible. Please be patient and kind to our staff as we continue to try and process the large volumes of demand on our services. We trust this information is helpful and believe we will deliver you an improved service in the future. Kind regards, James Leach Patient Service Manager
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Review titled Appalling service
Rated 1 star out of 5
by B Woolford - Posted on 24 November 2023
Due to the appalling service from Whiteley practice during the past 3 years, I have had no choice but to change to another Drs surgery. I have waited over an extended n the phone for appointments only to get close to the end of the queue only to be cut off. When I do eventually get to the triage stage I have sometimes not been contacted. Numerous times the reason given was they called the incorrect number despite me informing them of correct number. On occasions the response or non response from the surgery has caused me to become anxious and depressed, exceperating my illness. Please Meon Practice, listen to the feedback your patients are giving you to mak improvements....starting with training all your receptionists to the same professional standard some demonstrate. Your patients rely on you when they need help and should not be made to feel they are an inconvenience.
Visited November 2023
Review titled Meon Health Practice
Replied on 06 December 2023
Dear B Woolford, Thank you for taking your time to share this experience with us. We are truly sorry to hear you feel we have not met your expectations over the past 3 years which led to you leaving the Practice. Regarding concerns of difficulty contacting the Practice, our telephone services have been one of our top priorities over the past year as we acknowledge there have been historical difficulties with telephone access. We continue to recruit new staff to improve response times and connectivity, as well as training staff outside of our reception team to support patients where possible and sustain the improvements we have made. We will of course take your feedback regarding inconsistencies across our reception team and address this with our staff to ensure training is provided, and we are sorry if any of our staff have made you feel like an inconvenience. We also plan to introduce a new website and better digital access to address the need to improve our patient service and experience. For some context of demand on our services, last month (November) our team responded to over 9,000 calls with the longest average wait time of 16 minutes and an average queue position of 11 during peak hours which is a significant improvement on our figures towards the end of last year, but our phone lines are of course busiest first thing at 8am and we do our best to respond to patients as quickly as possible. Our phone lines are also restricted to a maximum number of calls waiting, which is in line with your experiences of technical issues leading them calls being cut off. We reported this is with our telephone providers, and they found our phone lines are not able to process the extremely high number of calls attempting to connect with us, and therefore we are forced to restrict the number of concurrent calls to address this issue. When our telephone lines reach full capacity, there is an automated message that plays to callers advising that our lines are too busy and to try again. We also want to apologise if we have impacted your depression and anxiety with incomplete attempts to contact you. This is not the service we aim to offer, and we offer our deepest apologies if this is how you have been made to feel from our inconsistencies and inaccurate records of your contact details. Finally, we do wish to highlight that we do listen to our patients, and we are trying very hard on improving. In our NHS Family and Friends Test data from November, we received 91.8% positive responses of either 'good' or 'very good' and a 5.6% increase to the highest score of 'very good' from our October scores. While we are very sorry to read this is not the service you feel you received, we trust this offers assurances to you and our patients that we are working to improve, and many patients do receive a positive experience. We trust this information is helpful and we hope you find the service you need at your new surgery. Kind regards, James Leach Patient Service Manager
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Review titled Always a disappointment
Rated 1 star out of 5
by Heather Vaughan - Posted on 03 November 2023
I have never known such poor medical service until whiteley surgery. It is disgusting that the only way an appointment can be made is to line up from 7:30am outside the surgery, to then fill in a generic snd symptom dismissive form, to then just hope you get a call back. Children in pjs forced to stand and wait while feeling unwell, elderly sat in the freezing cold waiting for doors to open just so they get a chance at being seen. Disgusting. I got to the surgery at 7:30. Waiting in the cold. was finally allowed in and had to fill in a form. Then received only a text message asking for more information. And then to top it off, the doctor replied in message with “yes it would appear that could be your diagnosis, but there’s nothing we can do for that, so he’s the criteria leaflet, if you think that’s the answer then diagnose yourself” Absolutely appalling !!! I now need to go back, wait again, fill out the form differently so I’m dismissed and hope a different doctor will see me. Disgraceful surgery.
Visited October 2023
Review titled Meon Health Practice
Replied on 06 December 2023
Dear Heather Vaughan, Many thanks for taking the time to provide this feedback. We are sorry to read you feel we are a disappointment and we are not meeting your expectations as a patient of the Whiteley Surgery. Regarding concerns of access to an appointment, we currently offer patients a pathway either by telephone or in person at any of our three surgeries, but we do not request patients wait outside the surgery before we open at 8am, Monday to Friday, in order to contact us. The majority of GP surgeries across the country will be operating at a similar opening time at which point patients can chose to attend the surgery in person to request an appointment or any other query they may have, and we do not believe this is not something isolated to the services we provide at Meon Health Practice. Regarding your concerns of a generic form that we ask our patients to complete in order to request an appointment, we are sorry that you feel this form is dismissive. These forms are a clinical questionnaire which has been created with guidance of our GP Partners to ensure we ascertain important pieces of both clinical and personal details for our staff to support our patients efficiently and effectively. Regarding your concerns of the outcome to your recent contacts, having checked your records we can see that there was a text message asking for further information from our Triage GP on review of your appointment request form that was submitted. This information was requested so that the appropriate next steps of your care plan could be decided, using the information you presented to our Triage GP for clinical consideration. On the day of your contact, our Triage GP was responsible for assessing over 200 appointment requests, and therefore we do often require additional information to ensure the correct and appropriate decision is made for the care of our patients. Text based consultations are quite often used in modern practice as not all forms of clinical consultations require a telephone or face-to-face appointment in order to ascertain the clinical nature of a patient contact or provide appropriate clinical care or advice to support our patients. We can also see from your records a further text-based consultation was sent to you by Dr Howden with clinical information relevant to the appointment request reviewed by our Triage GP. All of these clinical contacts were offered within six hours of your original request to us, and we are sorry to read that you are disappointed with the service you have received in light of this review by two of our doctors in such a quick response time. Finally, we can see you have recently had two more appointments with us, and it has been recorded that you agreed to the plan offered in both of these consultations. We trust you are now receiving the support you did not previously get in your opinion we believe we will deliver you an improved service in the future. Kind regards, James Leach Patient Service Manager