It appears our phone system is able to receive calls again. Obviously, our lines won’t open until 8 am, but we have been able to make and accept calls.
We thank our patients for their patience.
This has also focussed our mind on making the new system work for our patients and the practice to its full potential and we will be in discussions with our provider to enquire about options to ensure emergency diverts will kick in when there is another telephone failure in the future.
We do not feel it is acceptable for our phones to be unavailable because the system at either surgery building is down and will look at what we can put in place to battle that problem.
We are fully aware our patients need us, and we will make the phone system a priority over the next few weeks. It is not an easy task to program the system for all the possible options. After all, bank holidays, weekends, half-day closures for training, system failures, electricity cuts, etc will need to be considered.
Putting a queue system in place will also take priority. It will not solve the problem of our phones being bombarded with calls when the lines open, but will, hopefully, improve the experience for our patients. We have already agreed with our team that a maximum of 5 callers in the queue will be allowed, to allow more would lead to excessive waiting times and charges for our patients.
As a caller, you can obviously decide whether you wish to wait in the queue or whether this is unacceptable to you. If you find it unacceptable to wait, please hang up and try later. The lines tend to be less busy in the afternoon.
Don’t like waiting or repeatedly finding the line engaged? There are other options too.
For booking appointments:
- Book a telephone appointment online via the NHS App or Patient Access (you will need a linkage key from the surgery for this option)
- Book a pre-bookable appointment or nurse appointment at our front desk. We do not allow same-day booking for doctors at our reception desk to ensure patients phoning for an appointment also stand a chance.
For non-medical medical advice or admin queries:
- You can also try AccuRx Triage: https://florey.accurx.com/p/C85018
This is for non-urgent issues only! It can take up to 3 working days for the surgery to respond to your question!
Once more, we would like to apologise for the inconvenience caused and we will investigate options to avoid this happening again. We side with our patients in believing this is an undesirable and unacceptable situation!
