Virgin Care has told the Times everything it plans to do to fix Church Lane Surgery after more than 130 disgruntled residents shared their bad experiences.

The surgery, run by Virgin Care, was ranked the worst in England for overall experience during the last nationwide GP patient survey.

Patients now say they have had enough and have formed the Action to Change Church Lane Surgery group on Facebook.

A spokesman for Virgin Care said: “We took on the running of Church Lane as a very busy, challenged practice two years ago and have been working hard to improve the service.

"We are aware that there is still more to be done and have an improvement action plan in motion but these changes will take time to embed.

“For example, we are recruiting more permanent GPs and nurses, have increased the number of appointments available, and improved the telephone system and repeat prescription process.

"We have a strong track record of delivering high quality NHS services and of turning services around and we are committed to improving Church Lane surgery.”

Background

• An update on the improvements we are making is on our website churchlanesurgery.co.uk/about-us/improvement-update.

• We took on the practice in July 2016 after the four GP partners who ran the surgery all retired.

• We have developed a plan, in tandem with our recruitment drive, to bring in more permanent members of the team.

• We have improved our telephone system to reduce the length of time callers are waiting to get through to us. Average waiting times have reduced from nine minutes in April to three minutes in September.

• We have provided more appointments and supply is now exceeding demand from patients as a result. We now expect to see a reduction in the waiting times for patients to see a GP, nurse or healthcare assistant. Overall, we are providing more appointments than we are required to by our commissioners.

• We are introducing an electronic prescribing system which will allow repeat prescriptions to be dispensed electronically without the need to be hand signed by a clinician.

• We’re also encouraging local people to join our Patient Participation Group to help us continue to improve services for them.