We have listened to patient feedback and have changed our appointment and telephone system in an endeavour to meet your requests.
We only operate an appointment system - we do not offer a walk-in service.
The practice has been operating a telephone triage system since April 2020. Patients requesting an appointment will be called back by a doctor to see if the problem can be resolved by telephone. If not, an appointment will be made. Patients needing to be seen will be seen that day.
To help with our triage system the doctors have asked the receptionists to ask some basic questions about the nature of your problem so that they can book you with the most appropriate practitioner.
Urgent: Acute episodes or medical situations that you feel are urgent may be seen by the duty doctor. In most cases the duty doctor will call you first to prioritise the sickest patients first. This is why it is important to give brief details of the problem to the receptionist. They are bound to confidentiality rules too. Due to the nature of these clinics appointment times cannot be guaranteed and you may be required to wait. Please phone as early as possible during the day.
Practice Nurse or Health Care Assistant: It helps the receptionist and the nurse if we know why you are coming to see them so that the appropriate length of time, equipment and co-ordination with a GP can be arranged where necessary.
Midwife: The midwife attends our surgery to run her clinics on specific days. Please speak with a receptionist to make your appointment, you do not need to see a GP first
Blood clinic: Our phlebotomist and Health Care Assistant run blood clinics. Patients are seen by appointment which can be made in advance. You do not need to be registered at our practice to make an appointment. But everyone needs to bring their form or they will be turned away.
If you do not need your appointment please let us know to help reduce our waiting times.........Cancel your appointment - Someone might need it!! :
Calls for cancelling appointments are fast tracked to save you waiting on the line. Ring the surgery on the usual number 024 76332628 and select the option to cancel an appointment. You can leave a message - thank you.
Why is General Practice facing a crisis?
Media outlets are often speaking of a ‘Crisis’ in General Practice. We hope this explains the challenges facing GPs in the UK, and how these directly affect patients.
A combination of factors has put our family doctors in a really difficult position:
1. Doctor workload has increased by 20% in comparison to 2008 and is still rising. The average Brit sees the doctor six times a year –twice as often as a decade ago.
2. Despite rising workload, the budget for general practice has stayed the same as 2008, and, is likely to decrease over next 5 years. GP practices only get funding for you to visit them twice a year. In fact General Practice only gets 8% of the NHS budget even though 90% of patient contact in the NHS happens in GP surgeries.
3. This leads to shortage of appointments and longer waiting times. Currently almost 11% of patients are unable to get an appointment within two weeks.
4. As a consequence, more people are going straight to A&E for treatment.
This is bad for the NHS budget, as A&E is more expensive – a 10-minute GP consultation costs the NHS £36. But the average cost of an attendance at A&E is more than double that.
5. The increased pressure is leading to burn out in GP's. Doctors are frequently carrying out over sixty 10-minute-consultations a day (plus phone calls, paperwork and home visits to frail elderly and terminally ill patients). We are all aware errors happen when work is too intense.
6. Loss of the GP workforce. In a recent survey 6 out of 10 GPs are considering early retirement and more than a third are actively planning for this decision. With the poor situation in the UK many doctors are leaving the NHS: 5,000 home grown doctors a year consider leaving the NHS to work abroad. Many Australian hospitals are heavily staffed with British doctors.
7. Medical Students and doctors in training don’t want to become GPs There is currently a GP training crisis and in some areas up to 1/3 training posts are unfilled. New contract changes could worsen this situation.
BUT. . . the NHS is still one of the best health care systems in the world, and one of the few totally free ones. In order to protect our NHS please support your GP at this very difficult time.
Please see our website for ways to help.
For further information please contact campaigngpsurvival@gmail.com https://twitter.com/cgps_gp Swallow image used with permission © haveagander.biz