AIBU to send this letter re: rude loon of practice manager @ GPs?

[ravenAK]

Honestly, it was surreal. Incidentally, for both phone calls I was sitting in a room with several work colleagues who confirmed to me that I wasn't somehow being rude without realising...

Dear Dr Kilbride,
I am writing to express my concern at the behavior today of your Practice Manager, Mrs Hyacinth Bucket.
My husband telephoned your surgery on Friday, 11th December to enquire about joining your practice ? we moved to Our Rd in May & are now out of catchment for our previous surgery. He was asked to download, complete & email the registration forms, which he did at 10:37am that day.
I telephoned this morning to check that the forms had been received (dh had told me that he?d returned them; I assumed this meant that he?d physically dropped them in to the surgery), & to arrange appointments for myself & my son ? we both need routine repeat prescriptions for our asthma.
Mrs Bucket informed me that she hadn?t received the registration forms. She expressed doubt that dh had bothered to return them. I said that I would double check in case I?d misunderstood him; in which case, or if the forms had been mislaid at the surgery, I?d print off duplicates & hand them in this afternoon. I asked how quickly I could see a GP, as my five year old son needs a repeat prescription & I was anxious to get this sorted out before Christmas.
Mrs Bucket adopted a patronizing tone of voice to ?explain? that we needed to re-submit the forms. She then talked me through the procedure (check after 48 hours to see if we had been accepted, new patient appointment, then GP appointment). She said that it was impossible for either myself or my son to have an appointment before Wednesday or Thursday of next week, assuming we were accepted as patients (an outcome which, she strongly implied, was doubtful).
I was rather taken aback by her unhelpful attitude.
However, I telephoned dh, who explained that he?d emailed the forms to the surgery.
When I rang Mrs Bucket back to explain this, she checked the practice?s email. It apparently hadn?t previously occurred to her to do this. She found the emailed forms, but insisted that they had been emailed ?today?. I explained that this was not the case, as was easily verifiable from the date & time stamp in my husband?s email outbox, & asked again how quickly we could see a doctor.
She again adopted a rude & patronizing tone: ?As I told you earlier??. The subsequent conversation included phrases such as ?We aren?t obliged to accept patients?, ?It doesn?t matter if you sent them 20 days ago if I haven?t seen them? ?You aren?t our patients, so I don?t have to help you?, ?You should probably apply to a different practice?, ?I am the practice manager & you were rude to me earlier? (absolutely not the case, I was extremely patient).
The conversation ended with me agreeing that we would certainly go elsewhere.
Dh telephoned later to confirm that we wished our application deleted. He spoke to your receptionist, who was very informative: she explained that the email system was relatively new, only checked every two days & that staff didn?t really know how to use it.
It surprises me, frankly, that a staff member such as Mrs Bucket, who is employed by you in a ?management? capacity, is not au fait with such 20th century clerical skills as checking the date on an email & downloading an attachment within a week of its dispatch. However, the presumably rudimentary nature of her ICT skills certainly doesn?t excuse her rude & aggressive telephone manner, nor her refusal to engage in a courteous & professional way with a family of prospective patients who had applied using a method which your staff recommended, nor her suggestion that both dh & myself were lying to her about returning the forms.
Dh made it clear, in an amicable conversation with your receptionist, that we would be registering elsewhere, having completely lost confidence in your practice. She helpfully suggested an alternative local surgery, but for some reason felt it necessary to tell dh that ?They are white?. We fail to see the relevance of this & find the implications of the comment thoroughly offensive.
I am cc?ing this letter to the Primary Care Trust. We are of course willing to discuss its contents with them at any time.

Yours etc

I don;t think its clear what the timescale is from the forms being emailed to the forms actually being found in the email system - to me it reads (on a quick initial reading) that the forms being emailed, your initial phone call, you checking with your DH, your 2nd phone call to say they had been emailed and the subsequent discovery of the forms all happened within the same day.

Whilst you don't need exact times as to when emails were sent, maybe a bullet pointed chronology would help that section

• forms were emails (as advised by the surgery was the fastest and preferred method - if that was the case of course) on the morning of the 8th
• Initial follow up phone call on the afternoon of the 11th...

TBH I think in a LOT of small institutions where the main thrust of things isn't computer based (small offices of places like driving schools or other things, Drs Surgeries, schools etc) that often email isn't checked all day every day - esp when the vast majority of enquiries are still phone and in person - so the fact that the email is only checked every 2 days isn't really that big an issue - unless of course what actually happened in the timescale was that

• it was waaaayyyy over that 2 days (if the person who normally checks the email is on holiday for a couple of days then its feasible that no-one else would do it in that time, if however they were off for a fortnight really someone else should do it)

• the person who did check it was totally incapable of doing so - it sounds like once the forms were discovered in the email they were read, opened and printed off in a comnpetant manner by someone - Mrs Bucket didn't say anything to the effect that as they had been emailed and she didn't know what to do with them you'd need to post in new copies etc - basically what she said was that the forms had literally just come to her attention as they hadn't been actioned (much, in her mind, as if they had just come through the post at that minute, delayed due to whatever reason) and the 48 hours it would take to process them was only startning now that the forms had been discovered.

YANBU.

I wonder if she was being so snitty because you've lived there since May and have only just tried to register and are now saying it's pretty urgent. Not that it matters.

Do you live in England? If so, you do realise that you don't have to live in a catchment area to see a GP now, don't you?

Irrelevant, but I can´t believe you moved in May & are only just registering!

You do still have to live within the catchment area of the GP you want to register with, this might change in the future but that is still the case currently. If you live within the catchment area and the practice list is open, and 99% will be, they have no option but to register you - so that was a load of rubbish.

Some GP practices still behave as though they are doing you a favour, and I occasionally get phone calls from patients struggling to register, I would call the practice (I work for a PCT) and tell them to register the patient and stop being awkward.

You can see a GP anywhere as a temporary resident, but that would usually be while you're on holiday or working away, you should really be register with a GP at home, and I have to agree you have left this a long time, especially if your on regular medication. You should have been given 30 days notice by your last practice when you told them you'd moved, most people find a new GP within that time.

GP practices are supposed to keep a record of patient complaints and should do an annual review to look for trends, learning points etc.

Probably a good idea to copy the letter to the PCT Primary Care Commissioning Manager or QOF lead if you want someone to check it's been acted upon. Don't just send it to the PCT, use at least a job title.

TeaOneSugar is right. When we lived in South Hampstead the officious office manager at the GP practice there refused to register DH and DD2 'for six months' (DD2 was a baby!) because they had 'foreign' (EU) passports! Also rudely implied we, or at least half the family, were benefit/NHS seeking foreign scroungers. The fact that I got MUCH BETTER medical treatment when we lived in DH's country thank you - plus paid taxes here for years, plus DH now working here, plus of course DD2 fully entitled to a UK passport totally passed him by. I wrote a brief letter of complaint and copied it to the PCT - I had put my phone number on it and got a phone call from the PCT fairly pronto telling me they had spoken to practice and they would now register all of us.

too long - needs some editing, and also ought to be more factual and less supposition - all that "adopted a patronising tone" - that is your interpretation , not an established fact.

I would urge anybody who has repeat prescriptions to register immediately with a new practice and not just when you need more medication! (have been there myself )

Am at the white comment but we have a similar Practice Manager who I really feel has an appalling attitude to patients. Perhaps it's part of their training? (Apologies to any nice Practice Managers)

hocaspontas - I think you've hit the nail on the head... Practice Managers often have had absolutely no training whatsoever

so, wasn't the original mistake yours and not hers? ie that you told her your husband had dropped the application off in person when he hadn't?

"Practice Managers often have had absolutely no training whatsoever"

Poca can you back this statement up?? Our PM and many others I know (I am a GP) are incredibly highly trained and efficient!

Oh and FWIW, OP sounds bizzare and appalling conversation, complain by all means !

oops sorry that was directed at Marge!

diddl, we only discovered a couple of weeks ago that our previous doctor was booting us.

I thought dh had notified them of our change of address (he works from home quite a bit & usually deals with this sort of thing). As it turned out, he hadn't remembered to do so: we've only moved a couple of miles & didn't actually know that you can't stick with the same doctor if you're happy to do so, which we would've been. Mild asthma aside, we're a fairly robust lot & none of us has needed a GP in at least 2 years.

I've blithely picked up repeat prescriptions from Boots twice - both ds & I have Ventolin prescribed every 2 months. Neither of us has particularly bad asthma, but we had a grim Xmas 3 years ago, pre ds's diagnosis, when he came down with flu & was quite ill. So discovering that we're down to one inhaler each - both quite likely to run out at any time - scared me a bit.

Nancy66: yes, it was. Dh hadn't specified the precise manner in which he'd returned the forms. Since I can see the surgery from my living room window, I'd just assumed he'd nipped in, picked up paper forms & dropped them back.

& for precisely that reason, when I called the Practice Manager back, I was perfectly conciliatory with the wretched woman despite the fact that she'd already been spectacularly brusque & unhelpful throughout our initial conversation.

Anyway, thanks for your input, ladies, I now feel rather better informed as to how these things work.

Reader's Digest version of letter going in post Monday. Excellent suggestion re: bullets, Bathsheba, I'll definitely do that.

Re- the "they are white" comment- are you sure she wasnt referring to the building? i.e. Dr Smiths practice on smith avenue- they are white. Meaning it is the white building on the road.

I find it hard to believe that somebody in this day and age would say something like that-especially over the phone.

Don't think it's too long at all. Send it.

johnthepong: yes, dh was rendered speechless by it. The context was that the two doctors (husband & wife team) have an unusual surname.

He'd called to confirm that following my run in with the practice manager, we definitely didn't want them to process our application.

He got the receptionist, who was very pleasant - dh got the distinct impression that she was unsurprised to hear that her colleague's behaviour had led us to change our mind about registering.

Dh said that we'd register with another surgery; the receptionist said something like 'You could try Dr Unusualname & Dr Unusualname, they're almost as close to you as we are.'

Dh asked her to spell the name. She did so, & added 'They are white'. I asked dh if she said this in a pointed way - could she possibly have got it into her head that he was making negative assumptions based on their name, perhaps because he asked her to repeat/spell it.

He's quite sure that this wasn't the case (I know this is subjective again, & second hand to boot) - she was saying it in a 'Don't worry, they are white despite their name!' sort of way.

He was fairly gobsmacked tbh. As you say, hard to believe.

Maybe there's some sort of gas leak in their waiting room? Either that or they've both been at the surgical spirits.

Not at all amusing really, though.

'the two doctors (husband & wife team) have an unusual surname.' - that's the second surgery, suggested by the receptionist at 'Dr Kilbrides', & who were the subject of the 'white' comment.

Doh. I need an edit button. It's been a long & trying week! [blush}

this so doesn't surprise me. and i work for the local pct. for the nhs.