Patients hit by the phone fiasco at five Swindon GP surgeries will be able to tell health service bosses exactly how they feel.

After months of frustration, where patients have struggled to make appointments through a common call centre run by private company IMH, the firm and Swindon Clinical Commissioning Group have called a public meeting to be held later this month.

It will follow on from a “learning event” to be chaired by IMH chief executive Dr Martyn Diaper and open only to invited guests.

Gill May, the director of nursing and transformation at the CCG, told councillors at Swindon Borough Council’s health overview and scrutiny committee: “The learning event is for us to really find out what went wrong and what we have put right and what we need to do to make it right and how to avoid this happening again.

“It will be followed by a session open to the public. We want to make it clear that our ears are open and that we are actively listening.”

One council member who is not a member of the committee but who will be at the learning event is Coun Emma Faramarzi, who represents Priory Vale.

She said: “I’m going to the event, and it’s good that IMH and the CCG are holding that and the public event, but I really wish we didn’t have to have them.

“IMH is a money-making organisation and it should know by now what it’s doing.

"And it should recognise that it’s dealing with people’s lives. It shouldn’t be having to have a learning event in the first place – I believe if it had done its due diligence before all of this then we wouldn’t be having these problems.”

Coun Faramarzi said she thought people would take the opportunity to go to the public event and added: “There’s nothing to be lost by doing that, but if you’re calling the doctor for an appointment that’s because you’re not well. The last thing you want to do then is go to a public meeting.

“People have paid their taxes and they just want the health service to work.”

IMH implemented the new hub system at Abbey Meads, Moredon, Eldene, Taw Hill and Phoenix surgeries in the autumn. Since then there has been a storm of complaints and protests from patients who say they have been kept waiting unacceptably long to even get through on the phone. Others say they’ve given up and have even presented themselves at A&E at hospital so they can be seen.

Ms May from the CCG was given a grilling at the health committee meeting by Haydon Wick resident Roy Worman during the public questions segment .

He asked: “Is the point of the hub to make money?” Ms May said: “No, it’s not.”

Mr Worman said he’d recently had an early morning appointment at one of the surgeries and just before 8am saw 24 people in the surgery all hoping to be able to make an appointment “as soon as the bell rang at 8am.”

The learning event is on March 26. A date for the public meeting has yet to be confirmed.