"24hr Medical Clinic"

Dear serpensrw65,

Thank you for taking the time to provide us with your feedback about the Cowes Urgent Care Centre. As you know, this UCC has been established to provide access to a doctor and a nurse 24/7 to manage urgent issues. Most of this "management" happens behind the closed doors, just like an ED, and it is always the case that urgent and emergency cases (the sickest patients) will get priority, no matter what time they arrive. I am pleased that what you saw was our staff being calm and ordered and not chaotic which is what can happen when we have 30 to 40 people attend on a shift.

Our service is staffed with only one doctor, because it isn't a GP clinic and should be providing urgent care, but unfortunately we have been inundated with patients that would generally be managed and seen in a General Practice (e.g. patients needing a script) because of difficult access to the GP clinics on the Island.

Thank you for bearing with us whilst we manage this additional demand. We are rostering additional staff on the very busy days, and we will always prioritise to see sickest patients first. The non-clinical staff are entitled to a break and I am assuming that the reason they were eating in the front and not in the staff room, was to help direct people to the right place (I will check that was the case).

I am also able to assure you that our staff will often suggest to people that they leave and come back later if there are long delays; and we also follow up with those people who leave against medical advice. I didn't hear whether we were able to meet your needs - I hope we did.

All the best, Jan.