Birchington Medical Centre wants to hear from you Over the past couple of years, Birchington Medical Centre has been through some well-publicised turbulence, after numerous complaints and campaigns on social media portraying the practice in a bad light led to a major shake up and change in staff. Looking to make drastic improvements in the way the practice was run, Hannah Price took over as Practice Manager at the beginning of January 2016, after having worked for Thanet Clinical Commissioning Group and within primary care in Thanet for around 18 years.
Hannah said, “In coming to Birchington this January, I was very aware of what needs addressing, and I’m told the same by most people in the community, including the staff and doctors here, the patients, some of the local councillors, and the patient group”. As a very patient-focused practice, research was undertaken in order to really get to the bottom of what improvements patients wanted the practice to make, and this highlighted 2 main areas of focus: the booking system for appointments, and a lack of doctors and clinicians. Patients within the research group noted that often they were unable to get through to book an appointment, or when they finally did manage to get through, there were no appointments left. In order to tackle the problem with the phone lines, Hannah is currently working on a proposal with the telephone service provider which would provide another 2 lines into the practice to make it easier for patients to get through. Patients also stated that a call waiting system would be really handy so that they would know how far along in the queue they were, which the service provider has also said they should be able to provide. Further to this, bookings can now also be made online via the Birchington Medical Centre website: www.birchingtonmc.nhs.uk, as well as through a mobile app which can be downloaded from the website, and can also be used for making repeat prescriptions.
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