GP Receptonist - Refused to escalate call to Practice Manager/Trying to cover her tracks

[think about it]

There’s a good few points to address here so I’ll try to do it in order but if I get sidetracked bear with me. I’ve read your message a few times over the weekend so hopefully I can have a relatively good understanding of what’s happened / happening.

 

I’ll start with what seemed to be the original issue – online booking / availability. Online booking systems take a few different forms but they’re actually all quite similar. It would seem that you’d had difficulty finding an available appointment and the receptionist had asked that you either call or try online from a certain time. That will almost certainly be because their appointments system does not release their book on the day appointments until that morning. This process protects these book on the day appointments from being booked beforehand and actually the 07:45 release of online appointments means that patients can’t sneak online at 00:01 and book everything up eight hours before the phone lines open. So, the almost simultaneous release of online and telephone appointments makes the system as fair as possible for everyone. The three week wait for a pre-bookable appointment is about right as these tend to be reserved for those with chronic conditions who need ongoing review.

 

So, then we come to the conflict with the receptionist. Your post explains that neither the online booking nor call at 8am met your preferences as you were driving to work. Can I ask then what exactly you had hoped that the receptionist would do? The booking policy at the practice seems relatively straightforward and therefore fair to everyone, call at 08:00 or online at 07:45. What sort of an exception to this would have been acceptable? Nevertheless, it seems that in sticking to the policy the receptionist was unreasonable in your view and on a ‘power trip’ because they didn’t bend the rules to suit your commute.

 

After a few days you call back, where the receptionist tries to explain the practice policy on complaints handling, repeatedly; presumably meaning that you were also unhappy with them sticking to policy and tried multiple times to be put through as you say you were getting nowhere. They ask what it’s regarding, presumably in an attempt to resolve it for you, exactly as I expect my reception team to do.

 

Reception / office areas in a GP practice are generally shielded from noise finding its way into the public waiting area, be that by virtue of a glass screen, doors, or perhaps a radio playing to mask conversation. The reception team are however all bound by the same confidentiality agreement in their contracts and therefore there is no breach in hearing a one sided conversation held by a colleague. If that were the case all GP receptionists across the UK would have to be sat in individual little booths.

 

Interestingly too, the call is recorded, as a PM the first thing I’d do is pull those recordings and listen to them, as I’m also bound by the confidentiality agreement and have good reason to do so. So, confidentiality isn’t broken in the confines of the practice. I also ask that our team access the computerised notes of a patient when speaking to them. On there are any pieces of information that will be relevant to the person taking the call, such as advice notes if someone needs longer appointments, contact details should a caller fall ill during the call and other information such as next / previous appointments.

 

But we come on to what seems to be the final conversation, where the receptionist agrees with you that you’re not getting anywhere and rather than continue a confrontational call they terminate it whilst you’re telling them that they have a bad attitude.

 

I’m astonished that you would seek to have someone dismissed from their job because they followed the GP / PM’s instructions on how to deal with a complaint, how to book on the day appointments and how to deal with a patient on the telephone who will not accept what’s being said and resorts to saying that they are unprofessional and have a bad attitude.

 

So from a PM’s perspective; and I’m sorry you probably won’t like this.

 

It’s not within the gift of the receptionist to change the booking policy to suit your commute to work, it’s not within the gift of the receptionist to change the practice complaints procedure, regardless of how many times someone asks, it is within the gift of my receptionists here to terminate a call that is no longer getting anywhere if it starts to degrade into name calling. It is my decision, along with the partners of the practice about how I deal with my staff when they do not meet my expectations and any action I do take will be in line with ACAS guidance.

 

Please do put a complaint into writing, you could even just copy and paste your first post and send that, but do expect that the recordings of your calls will be played, do expect that the receptionist will not be disciplined for doing exactly as they’ve been asked to do and understand that ensuring that appointments are accessible to as many of the thousands of people registered at your practice as possible means that the policy might not suit your exact needs.

[think about it]

Totally agree, Bazza. There's a line between firmly sticking to the policies and processes in place and being rude. However, not getting what you want doesn't automatically mean that the receptionist is rude or unprofessional. If my colleagues have in to every request for slightly different treatment then the whole system would disintegrate. We do allow patients with specific needs to use our system to the best of their abilities but I'm afraid that I would have never have considered a slightly inconvenient commute timing as a specific need. I'd just expect the patient to do what I and tens of thousands of others do and make allowances for it by setting of earlier or agreeing a slightly later start in order to do what I need to do. After all I wouldn't expect another organisation to alter their behaviour just to suit me.

 

If the recordings of the calls show that my colleagues were indeed rude then that'd be disappointing but it doesn't change the core message, only that they need some direction on how to deliver it rather than be summarily dismissed.

[think about it]

Let me start by saying the I did not try to book use online booking system to book an appointment for the same day (because you can never get an appoitment the same day...only a handful of 'available' slots are show) so thats a waste of time. What I wanted was an appointment later in the week...After all the GP practice state you can 'book 3 days in advance...' this is wha I tried and it does not work in practice because I was given an appointment in 3 weeks time. How can you explain that the appointment slots were some how magically all taken up for a solid 3 weeks on the day I called?

 

Secondly the receptionist explanation on complaint handling was wrong...the website says you can see the PM and she was telling me its against privacy issues?!? - She's confused and does not know what she is talking about.

 

Thirdly...she was rude in how she was talking to me, very aggressive and kept on interuppting me for no reason...is this the type of receptionist you would be happy to employ?

 

Okay, so the appointments were booked because they're a finite resource, once those in three days are booked then there's no magic involved just simple supply and demand. We can't offer a patient an appointment that's already booked by someone else, I'm certain that British Airways allow me to book in advance too but once those seats are full the website's general statements of 'Book Now' or something similar are pretty useless. It's no secret whatsoever that GP services all over the UK are under exceptional demand and in suggesting that you call at 8am the receptionist was offering their advice on how to get the best chance of accessing a convenient appointment, after all, they're the ones that book them day in, day out.

 

Given that you claim that the receptionists have consistently explained that the PM is not available and to direct your complaint in writing, as you've so ably done here, I'm struggling to see why it's such an issue. Perhaps the PM is unavailable due to personal issues or on leave and in their absence the senior partner is handling any complaints that may arise. I don't alter my practice website to advise people of my availability because I expect that a consistent message from my reception team will be sufficient to explain to people that I'm not able to meet with them, I do not expect to have to justify that repeatedly.

 

I do employ receptionists who are assertive and I ask them to be; as Bazza explained earlier and I agreed, there is a difference between rudeness and assertiveness but I wonder what they felt the need to repeat themselves, I wonder why they felt the need to talk over you, I wonder why you were not able to accept the explanation provided to you and escalate the call to the point where the receptionist who deals with hundreds of people every day during difficult times in their lives felt that their only option was to put the telephone down on you. I don't expect my receptionists to spend time that could be spent helping people arguing over semantics about what the website says when they've tried to explain something for the umpteenth time.

 

Like I said earlier, you're not going to like what I'm saying, I accept that entirely but please do try to see this in the cold light of day. You asked for an appointment, there were none available. You were advised to call on the day at 8am but that didn't suit your drive to work, you asked to speak with the PM and were advised on how to access them but this seemingly didn't suit either and then when the receptionists didn't cave into your repeated requests then they were rude and unprofessional.

 

You want my honest advice as a PM? Write to your practice manager, as suggested, have them pull the tapes (I've had a few interesting experiences of doing this where when hearing themselves staff and patients alike realise how they were actually coming across) and listen to them with the PM and point out where you think they were being unreasonable.

 

You didn't answer my questions about what concessions you expected the receptionist to make to the policies that they've been asked to work to in relation to booking an appointment or accessing the PM.

[think about it]

Any update Greenbeans?