I attach here the complaint I made to the HCCC in relation to Dr Mark Rowe

"I accept the principle, articulated on your website, that a clinician has the right to refuse to see any patient. What I do not accept is that the clinician can "sit" on a referral and then reject it for reasons of space. If I'm told I will be seen, my referral should not then be discarded, especially not purely for capacity reasons.

I put in a referral to Dr Mark Rowe. I called up to confirm it had been received. I was told that I had been added to the waiting list, that my referral would be triaged and that I would be seen eventually, in a period that may well be as little as six weeks. As a result of this, I stopped looking for a psychiatrist, confident I had found one. One week later I was contacted and told that Dr Rowe had retrospectively closed his books and that I would not be seen.

I then complained to the practice. They replied with two possible alternative psychiatrists I could see, one of whom was totally unsuitable as she did not work in my area (ADHD) and the other of which cost twice as much as Dr Rowe, and was therefore unaffordable. Given that one of the proposed alternatives does not even deal with my condition, I seriously doubt whether any consideration was put into the recommendation. Had I blindly made an appointment as recommended, I could have been on the hook for quite a bit of money.

I sent a reply back reiterating my concerns, proposing a solution (that space be made to see me, or that a workable alternative psychiatrist be found). I also expressed concern about whether my complaint had ever been sent to Dr Rowe. I also informed them, as a courtesy, that if my concerns were not adequately addressed I would be lodging a complaint with the HCCC, and potentially with other relevant bodies. I have not heard back from his practice.

Had Dr Rowe communicated to me that he was going to, or might be going to close his books, I would have been able to seek an alternative. Psychiatrists are overbooked at the moment, and in that week which elapsed before being told my referral was received, and I would be seen eventually, and being told my referral was rejected, I missed out on opportunities to be seen by other psychiatrists.

On a personal level, I feel this behaviour is quite rude. I work for a public health clinic as an administration officer that has come under enormous strain during COVID. We have had to take all sorts of steps to manage our waiting list, but we would never *retrospectively* close our books to manage demand, rejecting existing referrals.

I would like ideally to be booked into the service, as I feel this would be the most straightforward way of remedying the situation. Failing that, I would like a bona fide attempt to find a suitable alternative psychiatrist. I would like Dr Rowe to apologise, and to undertake to, in future, to inform his administrative staff if he may be going to close his books and instruct his administrative staff to tell people they speak with right away if it is likely or possible that their referral will be rejected as a result of book closure. I would like reassurance that my complaint was actually sent to Dr Rowe."

After following Dr Cannon from another location i ended up having to find another doctor because of the receptionists here.

Dr Cannon a great doctor but the new admin staff cause so many stressful issues. I used to see Dr cannon at Broadway and appointments ran smoothly and staff were organised, professional and educated.

At this location Dr Cannon was always running a minimum of 40 minutes late. This left me having to take full days off of work just for a 20 minute appointment.

The reception staff are unorganised, unfriendly and seem incapable of simple tasks like passing on a phone message to Dr Cannon.

It would often take 3 phone calls and an email to get through and even then, the correct message was never communicated properly.

There were several incidents with reception staff that left me in an absolute panic, including being told to go to the emergency room instead of passing on a simple prescription refill request and also being accused of lying about a certain medication Dr Cannon had prescribed me regularly for years.

I hit my limit when i called to say i was going to be 5 minutes late due to traffic, keep in mind Dr Cannon was consistently 40 minutes late, and the receptionist firmly told me i couldn’t attend the appointment 5 minutes late, even though i was happy to take a shorter appointment, and she would have to reschedule me for the next appointment in three months which would leave me without my regular prescriptions. I wasn’t able to attend and it took 2 days for reception to pass that message on.

If Dr Cannon had better receptionists i would still be her patient.