A GP surgery in Romsey has come out bottom in a public opinion survey.

Patients across the area were asked their opinions about the quality of the services they receive in the GP Patient Survey.

It gave people the opportunity to rate their local GP surgery in areas such as: overall experience, ease to get through on the phone, experience when making an appointment, usually seeing their preferred GP and percentage of remote appointments.

The surgery to come out top in Romsey was Alma Road Surgery with 69 per cent, North Baddesley ranked second with 68 per cent.

Abbeywell Surgery had the lowest rating of 62 per cent. As well as this, it had a rating of just 12 per cent for ease to get through on the phone.

A spokesman from Abbeywell Surgery said they were making changes.

He said: “We recognise that accessing the surgery by telephone has become increasingly difficult for our patients.

READ MORE: GP patient satisfaction survey reveals best and worst GP surgeries in Winchester and Romsey

"We do have times where our phone lines are incredibly busy. We have nearly 19,000 registered patients and receive on average 3,000 incoming calls a day.

“In response to patient feedback, we have changed our phone system so patients are told their call queue position to help people make a decision about whether they wish to hold in the queue or to try again another time.

"We have also introduced new measures to try and ease the pressure on our phones. Patients are now asked to call in the morning between 8.30am and 11am with urgent requests, and after 2pm for routine requests."

He said that since the system was introduced in April, it had seen nearly a 50 per cent decrease in the total number of inbound calls and almost 50 per cent decrease in the number of patients hanging up while in the call queue.

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He said: "Call wait times have also reduced which has had a positive impact on both our patients and our staff. We recognise we still have work to do and we are currently recruiting reception staff to specifically cover our afternoon shifts."

He said they were working on staff retention and training.

He said: “We are also not unlike any other organisation and we have seen higher than normal rates of staff sickness – particularly over the last few months - which has had, and continues to have, a significant impact on our staffing levels."

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