Peterborough GP surgery among top 20 worst in the England for patient experience booking an appointment

Nightingale Medical Centre on Damson Drive in Dogsthorpe was rated as the 19th worst in the country according to data collected as part of the most recent GP Patient Survey.

The data was collected by Ipsos Mori, on behalf of NHS England between, from questionnaires sent out between January and March 2021 to adults registered with GP practices in England. Around 2.41 million postal questionnaires were sent out and around 850,000 responses were received, putting the national response rate at 35.3 percent.

That data showed that 27.4 percent of patients who responded to the survey had a “very poor” experience when booking an appointment.

This is the worst figure of the 84 surgeries in Cambridgeshire and ranks as the 19th worst nationally.

As part of the survey, patients were asked to rank their experience when booking an appointment as either very good, fairly good, neither good nor poor, fairly poor or very poor.

A total of 512 forms were sent out to Nightingale patients and 140 were returned. Of those 140, 16 percent rated the booking experience as poor and just 6.7 percent said that it was very good. Only 20 surgeries in England received a lower percentage of very good approval.

The practice has received a number of negative reviews online and has a google review rating of 1.4 out of five from 50 reviews. One commenter said: “Utterly fed up now. Never able to get an appointment, even when trying to get through dead on 8.30am. When I’ve managed to get hold of a doctor, they’ve sent my prescription to a pharmacy in Bedfordshire?

“Tried ringing this morning, got to number one in the queue and then told ‘my call could not be connected’ and the line went dead. Spent another 10 minutes trying to get through again. Can’t fault reception, they are always polite and helpful when I manage to get through.”

Another said: “I am very disappointed with this surgery. It is absolutely impossible to get an appointment. Even if you start ringing at 8:30am it’s difficult getting through and when you do there’s no appointments left. Why should we need to put extra pressure on 111 service if we are registered with a GP surgery? I thought the whole point of merging surgeries was so that patients would have a better service.”

A third reviewer added: “Called today 27 times from 8.30, then was 15th in the queue to be told no appointments left, tried last week three days in the row same thing. I am not going to say how disappointed I am, point is if you open GP and you registered patients what is the point of being open if you cannot take care of your own patients?”

The surgery is run by Dr Laliwala & Partners and is due to undergo a review by the Care Quality Commission this month. The group also run several surgeries across the area, including Parnwell, Newborough, Westwood and Ailsworth.

Ailsworth was rated as the 41st worst surgery in England in terms of experience making an appointment. Of the 115 patients who responded, 24.9 percent said the booking experience was very poor, 10.2 percent rated it as fairly poor and only 12 percent rated it as very good.

The Peterborough Telegraph has contacted Dr Laliwala & Partners for comment.

The best rated surgery in the Peterborough area was the Yaxley Group Practice. Of the patients surveyed, 41.7 percent said that they had a positive experience. This was marginally ahead of The Grange Medical Centre on Mayor’s Walk.

The two practices, however, only rated as the 25th and 27th best in of the surgeries under the control of the NHS Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Clinical Commissioning Group; in what will undoubtedly be a concern for residents in the city.

A breakdown of all the data for Peterborough GP surgeries can be found here:

The easiest...and hardest GP surgeries to book an appointment with in Peterborough