St Thomas Medical Group

I have visited the GP for 8 months nonstop for dressing changes every alternate day after my operation back in 2021 (Feb-Oct). Everyone was super helpful and caring, all the nurses took an amazing care of me - special thanks to Tanya and Maddy. They were not only professional, but very friendly, sometimes making jokes of my scar or sharing funny stories. It was fun in a weird way! 😊 Thank you!

When a call is first answered there is almost 2 minutes of "information" that you have to listen to before you are even given the option to choose the telephone queue for the service you need.

Once you do choose a queue, sometimes you will immediately get an engaged tone - at this point your call is over and you'll have to hang up and start again.

Sometimes your call will get to the queue you want but after any number of minutes waiting you will get a disconnected tone, again your call is over and you will have to hang up and start again.

Sometimes the phone will just ring out, no message to say you are in a queue and no one will answer after any length of waiting. Once again your call is over and you'll need to start again.

Unfortunately I am not talking about a one-off experience or one bad day here, I would not write this if that were so. I have been a client of this surgery for a year or less at the time of writing this and I have honestly needed to make in the order of 40 phone calls to get 3 appointments. If you are persistent enough - and you will have to be - when you eventually get through to the reception staff be prepared for them to be unhelpful, dismissive or rude. It can feel like they cant wait to tell you why you cant have access to the service you need or they will recommend you call back next week or next month or just call back at some unspecified point in time. You will have go through this cycle again, any number of times until you hit lucky and get someone who wants to help. Once you are speaking to a person, mostly, they have no time for you and cant wait to get you off the phone.

When I have managed to get to see a practitioner, those experiences have been good - very good in fact. But its the getting to see someone that is so very hard here.

My advice is that if you have the luxury of choice go elsewhere.

I award one star only because there is no option to give none.

Absolutely diabolical surgery. I have also experienced problems with this doctors that others have stated. I have waited for a phone call then received a message stating that I missed my appointment although my phone never rang. Then you have to try and get another appointment which is near on impossible. This morning I rang and then when I eventually got through after 35 minutes the receptionist answered and then it cut out, they didn't bother ringing back as I would of expected so now I have been on hold for another hour and 40 mins to which I ended the call as I couldnt listen to the continuous ringing. The appointment I need is really important as it's for a friend of mine who cannot contact the surgery themselves due to problems I can't go into detail about. Fortunately I have recently moved so I am no longer a patient at this doctors.
I would strongly advise anyone looking for healthcare to look elsewhere.

They appear to have removed my review, so let me summarise:

Rude receptionists. Classist, discriminatory service -- they make you book an appointment online, and then they cancel it if you don't have a UK phone number. There's no other way to get the healthcare I paid a ridiculous NHS surcharge for.

This place is awful, so unbelievably unprofessional for any line of business, let alone a doctors surgery.

Regularly incompetent, messing up prescriptions, and forgetting to process referrals. And the patient support over the phone keeps getting worse with staff often being clueless about procedure, arguing between themselves, endlessly passing you back and forth. It's as though they want to make it harder and harder for their patients to receive the care they need, making the support less and less user friendly as the years move on and continually adding more barriers between receiving the care you need.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg, it would have taken me an hour to go into detail about the many issues I've been subjected to here over the years.

I don't have the luxury, but if you do, choose a different doctors surgery.

AVOID AT ANY COST! Doctors are good but the reception team is absolutely ridiculous. They excluded me as a post- cancer and mentally vulnerable patient- because I moved houses- without ANY WARNING although legally they should have sent me a letter a month before. Because of this my referral to the hospital got canceled. When I wanted to make an official complaint about them- they conveniently stopped replying to my emails. Rude, not caring, those reception/ management ppl should not be working around ill patients as they’re making them feel even worse.

Always get a good service. Sometimes difficult to get through when phoning due to staffing pressures but always very helpful receptionists once you do. No complaints. Doctors and nurses always great.

Very stressed right now! I had an appointment this morning but had forgotten the time, I called at 8:30, was in a que, at 8:40 I was number 1 in the que, at 8:55 I was still 1 so hung up and called back, finally got through at 9:15 to be told I'd missed my appointment with Dr Senior and now I cant get another one till 01st feb! I was very clearly distressed on the phone but the person on the other end was not calming in any way, do your staff not have mental health training! I'm now sat in the surgery not knowing what to do! I know I should have remembered but your not helping........