Major communication issues at GP practice

My GP practice is a mess. Have had ongoing issues, so has my local pharmacist who cannot get timely responses from the 4 doctor (2 part-timers) practice regarding various patients medication questions. The “original” doctor is grand, when you can get him, but as often as not you are in the hands of very disinterested part-time doctors.

Communication among staff is appalling. The only way one can pay for a consultation is when they decide to phone you, maybe a couple of weeks after it, to collect the fee. I sometimes will walk in to the surgery to pay, and collect my receipt for insurance and tax (otherwise I wouldn’t not get one) and then they never mark me up as laid and I will still get a call about it. Emails are nearly always unsigned one liners, and unprofessional.

A very recent example. Yesterday I awoke unwell, coughing uP blood. Was very lucky to be slotted in to a self-referring test centre. Staff there said I needed to be seen quickly by a doctor, was developing a rash too. Left an email (only real way to communicate with them as phone is never answered) explaining I needed a consultation and was pending PCR result. Said phone consultation resulted in “sounds like a viral infection, will have to get back to you later on it”. Emailed them again after negative text result, an anonymous reception staff member said in an unsigned one liner that she didn’t know anything about it and what was I looking for. I re-described symptoms to her, then surgery was closed sonheard nothing.

Other folk I know have similar experiences of this city based practice. As I said, original doctor who founded the practice is very nice when he is available, but overall it is beyond a joke now, and I don’t even know of any other practice which is better and welcoming of new patients.

One issue, I think, may be that some of the GPs are working from home more (from where they are going the less-than-satisfactory phone consultations) and communication is poor between them and the admin staff. Is this a typical experience now of how people are finding GP services, especially since Covid?