Question to anyone who knows about workings of GP surgeries.

[ElenaP]

Not anything to do with diabetes (sorry, Moderators), but I think that there are people on the forum who may have an opinion.

Having been somewhat unwell, I forgot to attend the GP surgery for a vaccination. A few hours later I received a rather brusque text message that included ".... the practice reserves the right to send a formal warning ...."

I looked up 'formal warnings' and it appears that patients may be sent those letters if they have been rude to the staff, or similar.

Rather than wonder why, for the first time ever, I had missed an appointment, and ask after my health, they seem to be wanting to intimidate me.

Is this what the GP practices are supposed to do?

 

[lovinglife]

It could be an automatic generated text? Everything is done by computers these days, in your shoes I would call the surgery to get some clarification

 

[Rokaab]

At a very rough guess they probably have to include that phrase ".... the practice reserves the right to send a formal warning ...." whenever theyre 'telling you off', just in case.
Doesn't mean they have issued a warning, just that they can - possibly you may get a warning if you're a persistent appointment misser (I'm guessing here) - but yeah as lovinglife said it'll be an automated message so is probably sent to anyone who misses an appointment

 

[Hopeful34]

I hope you feel better soon @ElenaP Take care.

 

[KennyA]

They can do it, but that doesn't mean they should do it. I would not expect to see a "formal warning" given just for missing one appointment. It looks like the letter is a bit clumsiliy written - they probably only have one letter, and use it for everything from a single missed appointment to someone being abusive to staff.

It's supposed to be part of the paper trail should the practice ever want to remove a patient from its list (they can do this, but it should be last resort) and if it happens the local Integrated Care Board still has to find the patient a new practice. Practices kept coming unstuck by removing patients from the list, the patient complained, the practice said "but they've had warnings" but there were no records of anything......

If it was me I'd ask to speak to the practice manager and see if I could get the letter withdrawn, on the basis that it's the first missed appointment ever. It's not a warning yet, but the hint that next time it could be is clear. And we all have bad days and forget stuff (I do anyway).

Interested to know how you get on.

 

[Sarah69]

I once had to cancel a drs appointment as I’d become unwell about 40 mins before hand. I rang the surgery to cancel I was about 15th in the queue and whilst I was waiting to get through I’d got a txt message telling me I hadn’t turned up for the appointment!