OMG, the bloody gp's bloody **** online site

Everyday living
1

AGAIN, their damned site, AGAIN!!! GAAAAAAAAAARRGGGHHHH!

i typed out the description of my monday and a bit of today below. if you decide to read it: sorry for all the exclamation marks and shouty capitals. i’ve never needed to vent as much as i do right now.

  • problems logging in to site,on several occasions
  • ordered tramadol, 18th feb,
  • my daughter went for the prescription,
  • she was told it hadn’t been ordered
  • checked online, it WAS ordered,
  • photo taken of DATED (18.02.15) order on surgery’s site,
  • asked for confirmation that i would get my meds the next day.
  • told i can’t order tramadol over the phone and SHE can’t confirm it, it’s now up to gary the practise manager,
  • i said that i would have e-mailed the order had i known that an order showing up as ordered might in fact have not been ordered (whah…?!)
  • told repeat presc. requests. can’t be e-mailed (it’s a closed system?!) APPARENTLY,
  • checked my sent e-mails: i have repeat presc. requests sent via e-mail on: 15.10.14, 27.11.14 and 6.1.15
  • two worked, but one of them failed, their computers were ‘down’ at the same time as their online site?! SERIOUSLY?!
  • told i can ‘just pop a request in at the surgery’,
  • i have mobility problems due to MS i haven’t ‘popped’ anywhere for more than a decade…
  • told i can order via boots pharmacy(?!) which is next door inside the same building. boots(?!), who have so far: forgotten to pick up a couple of prescrip; mislayed another presc. (i had to wait for them to find it), although they suggested that i’d already picked up the order, then they found it, no apology mind you! on 2 separate occasions they mislaid the meds. in the pharmacy and told me, flat out that it had been picked up, THEN they found them, eventually. the final straw was that one of their flat out accusations was at their ‘out of hours’ window and when they FINALLY found it, ended in them loudly telling me what was in the bag, at the window, with people behind me! i was freezing, i’d been standing there about half an hour, my legs were in partial spasm (the cold tends to do that)… and then i felt like i was going to be mugged for my meds.
  • back to yesterday’s phone call…‘you’ll have to order the tramadol online then, she said…?!’, ‘i DID, on the 18th!’… I… SAID…
  • ‘well it’s showing up on my system as an order in january’, she said, ‘NO, that was an actual presc. i ordered IN JANUARY!’ i said. ‘i got that…’
  • ‘well. you’ll have to order it online…’!!! she said, AGAIN, ‘i DID blah, blah, blah…!’
  • then she ACTUALLY said: ‘well it’s showing up on my system as an order in january’, OMG, OMG, OMG! I BLOODY DID…AAAARGH! i didn’t say that last bit, i was a bit preoccupied by trying not to let out a blood curdling scream.
  • groundhog day
  • grounghog day
  • groundhog bloody day
  • either that or deja vu all over again…
  • she said, ‘i don’t know what to tell you, you’ll have to speak to gary, the practise manager tomorrow.’
  • ‘can you confirm that i’ll get my prescription tomorrow???’ i said… she seriously said ‘i don’t know what to tell you, you’ll have to speak to gary, the practise manager tomorrow.’,
  • ‘… you can’t order tramadol over the phone… you haven’t been able to for 2 years, you have to order online’ she said, sob.
  • ‘i know’, i said, 'i’ve been doing it ever since, but it keeps failing, i can’t order by phone, i don’t dare let boots anywhere near the prescriptions until they’re handed over for filling and i can’t sure as hell can’t ‘pop’ in.
  • and, no kidding, she said…‘i don’t know what to tell you, you’ll have to speak to gary, the practise manager tomorrow.’
  • i forgot, she also said that she would TRY and remember to tell him about it all. i could barely grunt down the phone after THAT one, jay-sus.
  • i’m typing this out so i don’t forget to tell gary anything. AND with the intention of pasteing it onto the MSS everyday living forum, because i know that it will calm me down when i share it.

i’m stopping typing to phone gary… what’s the betting he’s not available… ok, i’m going in.

he’s in a meeting, natch! she, the woman i spoke to, told me that if i wanted to make a complaint, that i had to put it in writing… i just want it sorting out! she said she’ll get him to ‘look into it’ and ‘have him phone me back…’, riiiiiiight. she told me that ‘tramadol was last ordered in…’, ‘january…!’ i said ’ i know…’

i have MS. i have high blood pressure, i’m wrangling both muscular and neuro pain on a daily basis, in 2012 i had a fairly nasty subarachnoid haemorrhage from an aneurism i had previously been unaware of and, not forgetting, i’m menopausal. but if i drop down dead, they’ll have to put cause of death as: ‘gp surgery’s boundless ineptitude’.

i was right, i do feel a bit better for sharing this ongoing cock-up of a medical practise’s prescription ordering system on here… and boots, the bloody, crappy boots next door to the doctors…

ok, posting now, hoping to release some of the bloody tension. if you got through it all, thank-you!

wendy xx

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2

OMG, Wendy!

As soon as I saw your post title, I thought: “Déjà vu: haven’t we already had all this? Surely not again/still?”

The really scary thing is there are actually patients more vulnerable than us. What happens to them?

I can’t just “pop in” or deal with stress very well either, but at least I’m not completely gaga yet. I know what I’m supposed to have, I know when I’m supposed to have it - I know whether I did or did not order (or receive) it, and I’m still capable of making a phone call to kick people’s bums.

Now what happens if those things are no longer true? I’ll have nobody on my side making sure I actually get my meds. Neither the surgery nor the pharmacy will notice that I don’t seem to have ordered and/or received anything in ages, and that I’m most probably stuck at home without meds (or dead from acute withdrawal of something I wasn’t supposed to stop suddenly).

This really worries me. What becomes of people who live alone, and no longer have the wherewithal to keep chasing, chasing, about everything?

I’ve often said this illness is like having a project to manage. It was like that even during diagnosis. I had private medical cover, but was it all seamless? No! The hospital couldn’t seem to just bill the insurers - even though they’d taken details of my policy before we started. Instead, I was personally invoiced for every damn scan, blood-test, and consultation, and had to keep track of all of it for the insurer. I had to seek renewed authorisation from the insurer every time a new test was ordered - and there were dozens!

My GP “didn’t know how it’s supposed to work” with a post-diagnosis transition from BUPA to the NHS, and asked me what happens! How am I supposed to know? Incredible as it may seem, I’ve never been in this position before (no, I didn’t actually say that - one of those things you want to).

Couldn’t get any Baclofen - everyone agreed it was indicated - GP said it was the hospital’s responsibility, hospital said they’d tell (not ask) GP surgery to do it. GP surgery denied ever receiving the instruction. I’m caught in the middle - with no meds - even though nobody’s disputing I need them.

It goes on, and on, and on…

Tina

xx

3

http://www.healthwatch.co.uk/

Hi Wendy

Refer to this site, if you are not happy with how the practice manager handles your complaint. Have a read of the site anyway for future reference.

You’ve increased my blood pressure. Sounds like a rubbish practice

xx

4

hi,

finally spoke to gary, the practise manager, he was about as reasonable and pleasant a person as he could possiibly be. he apologised unreservedly, he explained that they’d upgraded their system, ostensibly to improve the site (ha!) and he admitted that the exact opposite was true, for me, because he had access to their full computer info, he could see that I HAD ordered tramadol, on the 18th! but the uprade didn’t stretch to their staff, who had read prescription request issued by emis (the order system) and taken it to mean that the prescription itself had been issued by a doctor, she then promptly deleted the order from their system. earlier, i had been going through my health problems… MS, high blood pressure, daily fight with pain, 2012 subarachnoid haemorrhage and subsequent trepanning and brain operation to clip aneurism… and if i’d just dropped down dead from the stress, they’d have had to write in cause of death 'administrative cock-up)!

ah well back to the rest of today!

wendy

xx

5

thanks blossom, i’ve made a note of my local branch (it’s now bookmarked on my laptop), which is fairly close by, if i could walk any distance. the doctoes, and as it now turns out the higher up administrative staff are all great, the docs are really well informed about ms… and anything else we seem to throw at them. it’s just the lower down admin people who seem to think that we, the patients are a complete inconvenience?! grrrrr.

thanks again!

wendy

xx

6

tina,

all our admin staff seem to be trained the same way!

xx

7

Hi Wendy

Glad to hear Gary turned out to be a reasonable manager. Also happy to know that you do have some good GPs

Onwards and upwards

xx

8

My God you poor thing. Surprised you didn’t go postal on them. I would have. Testament to your stronger personality. I probably have shouted/killed someone by the third let down…

Hope things get better xx

9

yes, wonders will never cease, unfortunately i have to get past the front line lunatics in the asylum to get to the good docs! i really appreciate the support though, at one point it felt like i was just going to start shrieking! one of the things that stopped me was knowing i could get it off my chest here.

wendy xx

10

definitely not a stronger personality, just keeping the shouting/killing option for the next, inevitable issue!

thanks for the support

wendy xx

11

You’ve got a good sense of humour Wendy, that should help save your sanity…from the ‘lunatics in the asylum’

xx

12

come back the days,u spoke to a human at anytime,u phone,listen to what u say,and respond to what u say,modern technology ,is a backward step imo,come back the 70s

13

I had trouble with my local pharmacy, kept messing up my repeat perscriptions. Then the company that deliver my catheters told me that they have a pharmacy that can deliver my meds with my catheters. The service is great, they never mess up and automatically deliver my meds every 4 weeks, unless i tell them otherwise. They are called sucuri care, look them up online and see if they can help, love Bex xxx

1 Like
14

unfortunately on THAT day (and a few others they’ve tried to tank) both my sense of humour and the thin sheen of sanity i’m trying SO hard to hang on to failed me. i all but ‘hulked out’! i could feel my blood pressure ramping up, if i could have got to the docs that day, i hate to thing what i might have said… my daughter calls me 'zilla, short for mumzilla, it would have been handy to channel that kind of power, right in their faces .

wendy xx

15

i couldn’t possibly agree more, and you don’t even want to know what i think of the delightful generation who, while you talk to the side of their head, are, in fact, off in cyberspace with their friends. grrrrrr .

wendy xx

16

thanks for the info, bex. i’ve made myself a note of it in my e-mail drafts page, which is where i keep notes for myself. at some time in the, probably near future i’ll be organising deliveries, it’s nice to get feedback about which company is good. the company i found was Securicare, which is one letter different to the one you typed?!

thanks again for the info.

wendy xx