"The most horrendous practice I have ever…"

Dear Patient,

Thank you for taking the time to leave us feedback about your experience at Silverlock Medical Centre.

Firstly, we are sorry that you have had a negative experience with us and would like to reassure you that we are consistently working to improve the services that we offer to our patients.

I understand you are concerned about your medical condition being noted on the system as inactive. At Silverlock Medical Centre we use a computer system called EMIS web and all conditions have a pre-programmed time of remaining active on a patients record unless that has been overridden by a clinician.

Unfortunately, this does mean that on occasion a patient’s medical condition can be incorrectly labelled as a past condition in their record, this is a system issue that we currently do not have any control of. However, I would encourage you to speak to the Practice Manager who can rectify this for you with the support of our Lead GP, Dr Ibrahim Mukhtar. Please contact Aliye Aydin, Practice Manager on the usual number or via email at souccg.silverlockclinic@nhs.net.

With regards to your request for a letter, unfortunately this is a private service and not covered under the NHS. Therefore any requests for letters or medical reports are a chargeable service, whilst we understand that we have patients who may not be able to afford this service, we do not encourage patients to use this service regardless of affordability. The reason being that if there is a company or public sector department that require a letter or medical report for any of our patients they will often request this and cover the cost.

I can confirm that if the letter has been written for you by the GP, then this service has been fulfilled and the practice would not release the letter regardless of the signature as the work has been carried out in this instance. Of course you are welcome to request a letter from your secondary care clinician if they are happy to provide this service to you free of charge.

I am sorry if you were not made aware of the charge for the letter when making your request, usual procedure is to request payment for the service prior to processing the request and asking the GP to complete the letter or report. I will ensure this is fed back to the team to avoid such an issue in the future.

I would like to take this opportunity to let you know that you can access your medical records via our surgery app Dr iQ but verifying your identity.

I hope that this response has been useful, if you do have any other issues or concerns please do contact Aliye Aydin, Practice Manager directly so that she can look into these for you.

Best wishes

Danielle Caswell

Regional Manager