28th of june had a 10 past 3 app

waited an hour to be seen no one even came and aksed if i was alright or offererd me water very low standrad or is it because im Aboriginal

**I do not recommend this practice unless you have a whole day to waste (1 hr+ wait time).** (Read on for some suggestions though)

12:55 PM:

Arrived 5 mins early to fill in my forms as a new patient. Checked in.

1:10 PM:

Admin staff ask me for a copy of my drivers licence and medicare card.

1:20 PM:

Admin member asks me if I'm there for my COVID jab or a regular appointment (as opposed to checking their system first???).

Watched people arrive after me get called in before me.

1:45 PM:

45 minutes into waiting for my appointment I asked the staff (Thurs 16 Sept) how much longer I had to wait. I was told the doctor (Dr Eugenia Ellingworth) was running "a little bit late".

1:55 PM:

55 minutes into my wait time I asked again, to be told the same thing. The staff member (dark hair) didn't apologise for the wait. She asked if I wanted to reschedule. At this point I was already late for work and requested my appointment be cancelled.

Total wait time = 1 hour

I wish I had read previous reviews of the practice prior to booking my appointment as the 1 hour wait seems to be an ongoing issue (for the past 1 year).

Some recommendations for the owner/admin staff -

a) Apologise to patients for delays instead of ignoring their concerns.

b) If a doctor is running late, and the patient hasn't arrived yet - call them and let them know in advance before they leave their home. Ask them if they would like to reschedule at this point.

c) If a patient has already arrived at the clinic and you're aware of a delay, tell them when they arrive instead of waiting for them to ask the length of the wait time.

d) Re-confirm with patients on arrival if they need a standard consult or long consult so appointment lengths can be adjusted if necessary and there isn't a backlog of appointments towards the end of the day.

e) Following on from this, have admin staff check previous appointments for patients to see whether they booked a standard or long appointment and adjust based on their history. A lot of people probably say standard but go over time/come in with a list of things to discuss.

f) HotDoc & HealthEngine display appointments every 10 minutes otherwise. I'm not sure how this works but I know that I was able to book an appointment over the phone that wasn't available on HealthEngine. So perhaps there's a lot of double bookings due to the use of multiple channels?