Right to Respond

As part of our commitment to providing an honest and transparent view of health and social care services, Healthwatch Birmingham encourages providers to respond to comments the public have left.

Alongside ensuring providers can have a fair say in discussions about their services, replying to reviews demonstrates evidence of responding to patient feedback for the CQC, who regularly monitor our Feedback Centre. It is also an effective way to recruit service users for any wider engagement work at your organisation.

Guidelines for provider responses:

  • Keep language appropriate and civil
  • Remain professional and treat people’s comments fairly
  • Engage with the content of the review by addressing specific points and avoid cut and pasting a standard response
  • Don’t disclose the service user’s personal details or any potentially identifying information
  • Where appropriate leave organisational contact details e.g PALS or patient engagement teams for people to get further information

Remember: your response will be seen by everyone who uses the Feedback Centre, not just the original reviewer. All responses are moderated in accordance with our moderation policy.

For full terms and conditions, including a guide to how right to reply works for service providers download this guide.

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Original feedback for

Hall Green Health


System does not sit well with me

It's very difficult to get an appointment. When you call in to the surgery it's normal to be holding for an hour or more. When you do get through you have to give all your information and symptoms to the receptionist, who then talks to the doctor on your behalf, who then makes the decision about either seeing you or speaking to you. This system does not sit well with me. If the receptionist talks to the doctor on my behalf why can I just not talk to the doctor directly and free up the receptionists time. Sometimes the doctor will call back but you are only given a rough time estimate which then makes it difficult ensuring that you are available and somewhere that you can talk in private. When you call at 8.30am (when the lines open) if its non urgent you are told to call back at 10am but by then all the appointments have gone on urgent patients. The practice often makes changes to the system of booking in which makes things very confusing and they do not inform you of the changes which makes them hard to keep up with. The reception staff and Doctors are generally very nice and helpful but getting in and being treated by an actual doctor is the difficulty. I have to take regular medication but they will not put them on a repeat prescription meaning that every 28 days I have to try and get an appointment to get a prescription so every month I have to go through this horrible frustrating process and honestly the experience is very very poor.