APPOINTMENTS SYSTEM UPDATE

Dear patients

From 5 June, in line with government guidance and NHS England regulations, we are going to be changing our patient access with regard to how you make appointments at the surgery.

Moving forward, we will no longer be accepting emails for consultation purposes from patients. As we are now post Covid, emails will only be used for prescription requests, sending information that has been requested by the GP or sharing of your clinical hospital letters with us to scan into your records. You can also request any letters or forms to be completed by email which will be given to the GP to do with a 2 week lead time. Beyond this we will not be accepting any clinical related questions, support or referral requests etc. to be sent by email. All such matters will have to be dealt with by making an appointment and you will be sent a response to this as a reply if you request this by email.

For the appointments system, you will continue to have a choice of making a telephone / video appointment or a face to face appointment for anything in advance. Our aim is to try and offer you an appointment with a clinician in 2 weeks at least.  

For emergency on the day, you will be asked to give the reason for your emergency, and will be offered an appointment on the day with the duty GP subject to availability of appointments. Once the appointments have been filled up for the day, and you need to see or speak to a GP on the day, you will be signposted another service.

Lastly, we are trying to ensure all our patients obtain an appointment within two weeks of calling the surgery and only booking appointments more than 2 weeks in advance if, as a patient you wish to wait that long or the GP has asked you to make an appointment later than two weeks. Our aim as a practice moving on will be to try and offer you an appointment in two weeks or offer you alternative support where you can be seen to ensure that your health needs have been met. This will be via the following: econsult form online, NHS111, Urgent Care Centre, local HUB at Crown Street Surgery or an appointment with the local pharmacy for anything related to minor ailments.

We hope that you will find the above support more helpful