Appointment System

Doctors' Appointments

Consultations with patients are by telephone appointment in the first instance. This is intended to be more convenient for patients by reducing waiting times in the surgery.

To make an appointment, please telephone the surgery between 8.00am and 6.00pm Monday to Friday.

Appointments and medical queries are handled through telephone contact with the surgery in order to provide the most clinically appropriate service. 

If you are able to provide a text message (or e-consult) with details about the medical problem you wish to discuss it facilitates allocating your call to the most appropriate member of the team, and ensuring more clinically significant or urgent problems are dealt with as a priority.

The response times vary pending on clinical work load, but we aim to return most calls within three hours, unless it is clinically extremely urgent, which we deal with as soon as we can.  Please note we are not an emergency service, and if your call is about an emergency problem you will be redirected to appropriate emergency services (such as 999, A&E, Crisis Team).

Please bear in mind that that our doctors usually do home visits between 1230 and 1500 and so we may not be able to call you back during those times.

If you will only be available between specific times please let the receptionist know when booking the call-back and we will try to accommodate this.

If we are unable to get through to you we usually attempt to make contact 3 times.  For mobiles we may try texting if phoning is not working - we do appreciate signal can be variable and texts can be received even when phone calls are not.  Please do ensure your phone is not "on silent" and that the phone number you have given us can receive incoming calls from a switchboard.

Nurses' Appointments

Our Practice Nurses offer a variety of appointments daily to support patients with long term conditions (such as diabetes and asthma) as well as some contraception, injections, immunisations and wound management. The nursing team members have varied skills and specialisms, so please discuss your needs with the receptionists to help them provide you with the most appropriate care.  

Cancellations

If you cannot attend an appointment for any reason please inform us as soon as possible in order for us to give the slot to someone else.

Duty Doctor Arrangements and 

Telephone Consultations

We have adopted a different model of appointment booking that offers an initial telephone consultation with a doctor within one day.

The aim of these changes is to give priority to patients on the basis of clinical need rather than the old 'first-come, first-served' system. In order to achieve this we arrange an initial telephone consultation with a doctor which will usually be on the same day that you contact the surgery.

In doing this we are able to offer more timely and appropriate services. We have found that many patients seeking medical advice are able to discuss things with the doctor on the phone and not require a face-to-face appointment, while others who need to be seen in the surgery can be offered one, often within a few hours of calling. We are also able to make arrangements for necessary tests to be performed prior to an appointment so that the doctor will have the information to hand when a patient is seen.

A change from the traditional appointment-only arrangements is essential in light of the dramatic increase in the demand for medical services, despite the fact that we have more doctors working longer hours and little increase in the number of patients on our list over recent years. 

We have been working in this way for several years now (long before the COVID19 pandemic made it commonplace among other general practices), and we are pleased that here has been a high level of patient satisfaction with the new arrangements.

We hope that this system will prove safer, quicker and more convenient and are grateful for comments from our patients so that we can continue to improve the service we offer.

Our Surgery is now using AccuRx Patient Triage.

This is an online consultation service that allows patients to contact the practice to ask for medical help, medical advice or for administrative requests.

In the midst of self-isolation due to Coronavirus (COVID-19), accuRx Patient Triage allows patients to contact their GP from home.

Click on the banner below to start.

Home Visits                           

We ask that patients to come to the surgery, where we have the proper equipment and facilities available.   You may only request a home visit if you are housebound or are too ill to visit the practice. Your GP will only visit you at home if they think that your medical condition requires it and will also decide how urgently a visit is needed. Please bear this in mind and be prepared to provide suitable details to enable the doctor to schedule house calls.

In this respect, if you do need a home visit, you can help us by calling reception before 10:30am.

You may also be visited at home by a member of the community services team if your GP feels that this is appropriate.

Referrals

If you and your GP decide you need to see a specialist for further treatment, you can choose where to have your treatment.

E-Referral Service

This service allows you to choose your hospital or clinic and book an appointment with a specialist. When you and your GP agree that you need to see a specialist a member of the E-Referral Service team will contact you and help you to choose from a list of hospitals or clinics. You will also be able to choose the date and time of your appointment.

PLEASE ENSURE THAT YOU CANCEL ANY HOSPITAL APPOINTMENT IN GOOD TIME IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO ATTEND SO THAT THIS APPOINTMENT CAN BE GIVEN TO ANOTHER PATIENT.

If you have any problems please contact our secretary - 01765692366 - option 4.