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

Wake Green Surgery


Very Difficult to Access

I would agree with many of the comments on this site. If you can get to see a clinician, the service is very good, however, attempting to access the service is diabolical. Recently, I spent 3 days trying to get through to book an appointment I had received a reminder for. I rang at various times of the day (avoiding early mornings) only to be consistently robotically informed that I was '7th in the queue'. I hung on the phone for over half an hour on 2 occasions, but had to hang up as I work full time and could not hold forever. When I eventually did get through on the third occasion after 40 minutes, I was told they had no appointments to offer anyway! Given this, I am not surprised that the take up of certain screening tests is decreasing as there is no capacity generated even when inviting patients to appointments. I have also experienced the complete lack of confidentiality displayed by some of the reception staff. What amazes me is that, despite access issues being continually raised to this surgery that they appear to have done absolutely nothing about it. If it is necessary to wait such an enormous amount of time to get through, why do they not get more people on the phones??? Although it is possible to get an appointment on the day, this entails you calling at 8:29 and hanging on the phone - I have twice been given the 'only' available appointment at 08:50, so even this is a lottery. Such a shame as the clinical staff are generally good but they are severely let down by their support services and technology.