Care Opinion

Bad communication with hospital

Story from nhs.uk

"Bad communication with hospital"

About: Streatham Common Group Practice

A specialist at a London hospital sent a letter to the GP on Thursday 6 March (in the afternoon) asking them to prescribe me a medicine for a worsening condition. Feeling worse than before, I rang the GP reception on the following Tuesday to see if the letter had been read and the medicine was imminent.

I was told that a message would be sent to the pharmacist at the GP but that the prescription would take three working days. A phone call from the GP reception confirmed this a day later, stating that the prescription would be sent to my nominated chemist on Friday, over a week after the date of the letter.

I understand that the GP's policy is that prescription requests will take at least three working days. However, the request for the prescription in fact came from the hospital specialist's letter on Thursday, and not my chasing phone call on the subsequent Tuesday.

My nominated chemist is in the City of London near where I work. It is not open at weekends and I am not sure if the prescription will come early enough on Friday for it to be filled.

I am not likely to die without the prescription or anything like that, but I feel unwell and working is difficult. I feel I have been punished because the GP failed to read a letter relating to my ongoing health issues. I am also concerned that there will be similar delays on future, more urgent prescriptions.

I am writing this here because the complaints section of the GP website does not work - if you click on "Poor Experience" it just generates an identical window.

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Responses

Response from Streatham Common Group Practice 2 days ago
Streatham Common Group Practice

Submitted on 14/03/2025 at 18:05
Published on nhs.uk at 18:06

Dear Mr Hulme,

We are sorry that you are unhappy with our service this week and apologise that you experienced issues with our website. We do not know why you were unable to leave feedback as we do receive messages through the website. We are sorry that you experienced difficulty on this occasion.

We are also sorry that you have been feeling unwell and can understand why the situation with your prescription is upsetting. We would like to explain our processes for you so that you can see why this situation may have arisen and, if you would like to look further into your specific circumstances, we would be grateful if you would contact the surgery to speak with a manager.

We receive approximately 150 patient related letters and other documents per day. Many hospital letters arrive electronically but unless the hospital marks them as urgent, they are dealt with alongside all the other documentation we receive. Our administration staff work throughout every day to process documents before passing them to a clinician for review. Staff will highlight any requests marked as urgent by the hospital to the clinician. The clinician will then review the request and add and prescribe the requested medication if appropriate. The process can take a few days for non-urgent documents.

With regards to requests via phone for prescriptions, we have a small list of urgent prescriptions that are needed to prevent a life threatening situation, for example insulin and asthma inhalers. All other prescriptions must be requested in writing. Research has shown that prescription requests taken by phone are much more likely to result in prescribing errors and adverse events for patients. This is the reason for this policy, which is in line with most other GP Practices. Written requests go through a review and vetting process before being signed by a clinician to ensure safe prescribing.

We also receive a large volume of requests from patients every day asking for their prescriptions to be processed urgently. We signpost these calls to a written request if they do not fall into the life threatening category. While we understand that not having a medication can be worrying for patients, the medicines policy we have in place is there to ensure safety is prioritised. It is very important to us that medicines are reviewed and safely prescribed as errors can be extremely dangerous for patients. Our policy has been reviewed by the locality medicines teams and is in line with CQC regulations.

We hope that our response helps you understand the potential reasons for your situation but if you would like to talk about this further then please contact the surgery either online through an administration request, or via the phone, and request to speak to a manager.

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