Your feature about patient frustrations at Church Lane Surgery, Braintree has been brought to my attention as I know about difficulties in one of the other Virgin Care surgeries in Mid Essex.

In your article Virgin Care asks that patients make their problems known by using their Patient Experience service (see the surgery website).

This is totally right advice - patients should not sit and grumble about care which is not up to NHS standards.

However it takes time for the complaint to be resolved so the situation described (urgent prescription for somebody with terminal cancer) deserves more action, but unfortunately [in my opinion] Mr Branson takes little interest in Virgin Care.

He is probably sunning himself somewhere.

Here are some other suggestions for making feelings known: Contact the Care Quality Commission (CQC) where one is encouraged to describe positive or negative experiences of a surgery.

These are read by Virgin and in time you will get a not very useful reply, however your complaint is also monitored by the CQC itself and so Virgin don’t like this criticism as it could form opinion of the surgery when there is a CQC inspection.

With reference to Church End it says it is “carrying out checks using our new way of inspecting services”, and it will be published when complete.

This might be a pertinent time to make thoughts known before this is done?

Another action is to contact Mid Essex CCG (see website).

This is the group of doctors who are responsible for planning medical provision in Mid Essex so are always interested in the performance of surgeries.

Finally, if you feel so inclined NHS England is responsible for the contracts drawn up for the provision of care by a surgery -Virgin Care in this case.

Poor care should be reported - but I am also fully aware that sometimes when an individual complaint is unpicked by the Virgin Care Experience process the result may be a be some kind of misunderstanding.

But it is the breakdown of overall confidence in your doctor which is so important.

We only use the NHS in times of need and we should be supported on these occasions - that’s why we are so proud of our NHS.

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