I left the one star with no written account a long while ago now so perhaps things have changed there in the meantime. Both my wife and I were NHS patients back along. The practice lost a Dentist I believe, maybe more, without be able to replace them.
They kept making appointments with us and then cancelling them last minute, over and over again, via text.
They had a nice but not visibly competent receptionist who we witnessed actually texting information regarding one of us to a different patient, not connected with us, while in reception. Same receptionist then repeatedly failed to process a prescription for one of us, just for some special toothpaste, but then kept denying we had ever asked for it.
Finally, I went in in person, she spent a while searching in various stacks of paper for some written account or chit for the prescription, couldn’t find anything.
Then, out of nowhere from my perspective, she informed me that I needed another appointment in order to get the toothpaste, bare in mind the we were successfully registered with them as NHS patients and had managed to get a few NHS appointments over the preceding couple of years, at this point, we’d been trying to book appointments but they’d been cancelled last minute. She informed me that I couldn’t get an NHS appointment because the practice didn’t have the capacity, however we could have a private appointment at our soonest convenience.
I thought this was a bit rubbish, without being told, til then, our NHS status had been effectively rescinded due to a lack of dentists. After months and months of failing to get an NHS appointment with them we did go private, but on principle, we went somewhere else. Things may well have changed in the year or so since, but I found the outfit to be very disorganised and uncommunicative.
In the end I felt bad for that receptionist; she seemed overwhelmed by the number of enquiries, no doubt underpaid and definitely undertrained and unsupported. They’d been left to share the bad news that formally NHS patients were no longer able to get NHS appointments while also having to suggest people go private, I presume in some instances, with the exact same dentist. Tough sell that.
I felt really frustrated at the time, hence the 1 star, but I felt that most of that frustration would be misplaced if I laid blame on the receptionist, so I didn’t provide any text. I write this now as I only just noticed that the practice had asked what’s up in the comments.
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