THE front page feature (Surgery apology over patients' complaints, Craven Herald, February 22) will not, I’m sure, come as a surprise to 99 per cent of readers – not least Councillor Andy Brown whose (coincidental?) letter in the same issue was pretty much on the same theme as your article.

The article mentions Steeton and Silsden GP surgeries as being in the same group as the Fisher Practice, but you could have included almost all the surgeries from Keighley to Gargrave.

I accept that there will always be progress in all areas of life – nothing is for ever – but progress should not come at the cost of common sense. The on-line contact form for Modality is a pain to navigate, the most galling part is at the end where you can opt for either text or telephone response but if you opt for the latter, you still receive a text message to your land line which, by the time BT’s transcription bot has sunk its teeth into it, is total unintelligible garbage.

In a similar vein, Yorkshire’s “National Newspaper” (February 23) had an article regarding the findings of a report (at what cost?) by some presumably highly intelligent/paid professors which concluded that patients of GP practices were better being seen by a “Family” doctor (remember them?) who would be familiar with their medical history and thus not have to spend several minutes getting up to speed from other doctors’ previous notes.

Not only would this enable the GP to treat the patient promptly but also would free up several minutes during the day which would enable more patients to be seen. Gosh, what a surprise, who knew that?

Julian Hide

Sutton-in-Craven