The Medical Centre

Deserve zero stars. Been with this surgery for over 10 years and it has always been difficult including staff with attitude issues and since Covid the service has gone from difficult to non-existent. This surgery has always had very poor patient care and now they are just shameless about lack of care towards serious matters. They refused to do a simple blood test as requested of them by a specialist unit at a main hospital about a serious health matter involving a hospital discharge. Would not say why and just passed the buck. Very comfortable and very lazy staff refusing to do any work whatsoever, they are very defensive from the off and actively look for any reason not to provide any service or provide help whatsoever and actually lied about reasons not to provide a service - may as well be shut down as they just tell you to go to a hospital. Best register elsewhere to not give them any funding so that they can do nothing all day. Burdening already overworked hospital staff because of their laziness and hospital staff are already frustrated about them refusing to work, so it's common knowledge. They are now heading into their 4th year of doing absolutely nothing with non-practising GPs (unless you paid them for a private service on top of your taxes in which case why would you want to pay for a low standard non-practising GP not good enough for private in the first place?). Putting their comfort zones before tax paying peoples' serious health matters is disgusting, they could not care less about you. UPDATE Although they say they are open for new patients they are actually no longer accepting residents who live within their catchment area, even if you live 5 minutes away. They just want a tiny pool of patients to deal with, such is their reluctance to work. I have joined another Surgery, the reception staff are lovely and the medical staff are fully functional getting on with their jobs so no more hospital trips for basic services. Please note that there are surgeries who will accept you as patients even if you are outside their catchment area, please google. You will feel so much better getting shot of this work shy surgery and the bonus is they lose funding whenever a patient joins another surgery :)
Mar 28th, 2023

I wouldn't bother, useless unhelpful staff. Who would rather make a cup of tea than help you. Lie about services they off. Will basically tell you to go away. You have to knock on the receptionists window and stand outside in a public place and tell them who you are and why they should wake up the staff from there naps. If your happy to tell the whole street what you have and all your medical issues, come on down. Otherwise go elsewhere.
Dec 26th, 2022

I've been registered for almost if not over 10 years and myself and my family have always been treated with respect when we have needed to contact the GP whether it be for a prescription, admin query or for an appointment. This includes the receptionists who have always been helpful and polite, the doctors, nurses or HCA's who've always made me feel comfortable and reassured during my visits. I understand this is a difficult time for everyone working in healthcare so I just wanted to express my gratitude for the hard work that you guys do. Thank you!
Dec 16th, 2022

there's no way to get an in-person appointment to be seen by the gp. utter ridiculous.
Nov 9th, 2022

Unfortunately this Medical Centre run by Dr Balachandran is no longer what it used to be. The quality in patient care has massively declined, everything is done through e-consult which for the younger or tech savvy generation is absolutely fine, but for those who have still not adapted to the tech world it can be a daunting prospect. You can also phone the practice but with the new automated service now takes much longer than it used to, and most of the options won't allow you to speak to anyone who works there, if you wait too long on an option as told by reception to do so it auto hangs up. COVID-19 is still a threat to society and I fully understand why medical practices still have preventative measures in place. The use of the window at the front of the practice however is less than inconvenient. If you are hard of hearing like me forget trying to hear them muffle through it and get frustrated when you don't hear them, or asking for personal details that the neighbours and the street can hear, let alone the queue waiting across the drive way to be seen. Today I was at the practice and saw something which just blew my mind, an elderly couple had come in for an appointment which they had just walked into the practice for, the receptionist was not very welcoming and rudely snapped at the lady of the pair to go back outside to use the window, never mind the fact this lady was also on crutches and it took her some time to move through the practice. They did to their credit see this as she started to head back outside and decided to deal with her query at the front desk. This didn't happen without first shouting across the desk "Do you have a mask?!". I understand the precautions again and quite right the lady should have been wearing one unless exempt but at least a professional receptionist should have respect and be polite. The older gentlemen had accompanied his wife into the practice and when she was asked to put on a mask, he did not hesitate to retrieve one from his pocket. The receptionist shouted at him "Sir!, you can't be in here, we are only allowing patients in". The gentlemen kindly replied "I am here to assist my wife" and sat down in the waiting area as so did she. The receptionist marched round the corner to ask him to leave but fortunately another patient intervened and told her to leave him alone. I respect the rules but essentially the receptionist was asking the older gentlemen (looked in his 80's) to go and stand outside on a day in December where it is zero degrees. I would also like to add that the above rules should not just be for patients, the staff are not wearing masks, the nurse was not wearing a mask, the receptionists are all huddled in a small reception space without distancing, which they were asking patients to do. It all seems a little bizarre, if you want people to follow the rules, you need to also do it to help encourage it. I have unfortunately had to attend the practice on a number of occasions recently and every single time no matter how early I am the doctor is always late. Wait time today was 30 mins after when my appointment was, bearing in mind my appointment was at 9.20am and they open at 8.45am. I also would like to point out that I understand that emergencies may come up or need to be handled but when booking in at reception it would be good to be told there is a small delay this morning please expect a brief wait. Although over the number of times I have attended recently surely an emergency has not caused delays on every occasion. They do not communicate internally or update notes correctly, I have rung up to be told the doctor made no notes on this, or as like this morning the doctor didn't even know what I was attending for and started talking about a previous visit which was completely irrelevant. I don't expect much to change at this practice, the staff behind the desk will unfortunately always be rude and never have empathy for the patients they have. Dr Balachandran please address some of the underlying issues that are fixable and just bad practice.
Dec 31st, 2022