Woman waits on hold for more than 2 hours for GP appointment

Rebecca Parsons, who lives in South Ham, tried to call Gillies Health Centre on Wednesday, October 23 and was told by the automated voice that she was second in the queue.

Despite this, Rebecca found herself on hold for more than two hours.

"It's disgusting," she told the Gazette as she vented her frustration that both the phone system and NHS booking app were out of action, adding "the phones were not being answered and Dr. iQ was down so there was no way to book an appointment."

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Gillies Health Centre (Image: Newsquest)

Rebecca explained how she wasn't too concerned that she couldn't get an appointment for herself "I just needed to call up to arrange medication for my asthma, but there are people more ill than me, what if someone was in a more serious situation than myself?"

Rebecca, who suffers from disabilities, added: "It's not acceptable, there are people who need to use these facilities, they rely on their GP, and they can't access them.

"I've got a panic alarm I can use if I need to, but what has anyone else got? If they can't even contact their doctor for help, who can they call?"

Online, the surgery published the following statement: "We would like to apologise for any inconvenience that the recent Dr.iQ downtime has caused. We can confirm that there has been no data breach relating to this downtime. We want to offer our patients the best digital experience that we can. To help us do this, we will soon be releasing a new and improved Dr.iQ app. The new app will be on a new technology platform using another NHS approved supplier.

"You will be able to download the new Dr.iQ app shortly – and we will let you know when this will be. If you receive text messages from the practice, please keep an eye out for updates.

"In the meantime, we would encourage you to download and register with the NHS App, if you are not already a user of this. You will be asked to verify your identity; this is to ensure that your data remains secure. You will be able to use your NHS App login details for the new Dr.iQ app. Doing this now will help you to access the Dr.iQ app, quicker, when it is available.

"Once again, we would like to apologise for any inconvenience that the recent Dr.iQ downtime has caused."

A CGH Partnership spokesperson said: “We can confirm that our telephone lines are working.

"The practice is currently experiencing very high volumes of calls; we apologise for any inconvenience this is causing our patients.

"Patients being able to access our services remains our top priority, we are onboarding additional colleagues to help answer our telephone lines and our teams are working hard to keep our call queues to a minimum and patients can use the “call back” feature on our telephone lines, which means that they do not have to wait on their phone.

"We are launching a new and improved website and patient app to provide patients with an additional way of contacting our service, in the coming weeks."