Welcome to The College Practice Online

The College Practice 

Welcome to the College Practice!

Here at the College Practice we appreciate that this could be worrying time for the new patients joining us from the Allington Clinic and Allington Park surgery. We do work in a different way from your previous doctors, however, we hope that it gives you more flexibility in the times and ways that you can contact us when you have a healthcare problem.

The Allington Clinic will now be known as ‘The College Practice Allington’ and will be our second branch surgery. As such, you have the opportunity to be seen in any of our 3 sites and we will always try to provide you with your chosen location, where possible, when you need a face to face appointment with a clinician.

Main site:

The College Practice, 50-52 College Road, Maidstone, Kent ME15 6SB

Tel: 01622 752345

Branch sites:

The College Practice Barming, Marigold Way, Barming, Maidstone ME16 0ZJ

Tel: 01622 752345

The College Practice Allington, 26 Tichborne Close, Allington, Maidstone, Kent, ME16 0RY.

For the first 3 months you will still be able to use the original Allington Clinic number 01622 679020, after which it will transfer over to our main number 01622 752345 so expect to hear some unfamiliar voices at the end of the line.

How does the appointment system work?

We work on a total triage system. This means that when you contact us you will be initially offered a call back from a clinician. This could be a GP, Nurse, or Clinical Pharmacist depending on your healthcare issue. We do not have any walk in clinics and you will not be able to book appointments yourself. If a clinician needs to see you, they will book the appointment for you while you are on the telephone. 

• Telephone lines will be open 8am-12.30pm, but it will no longer be necessary to ring at 8am for an urgent appointment.
• When you call the surgery the Receptionist will ask you for brief details of the problem you wish to discuss as this will help the clinicians to prioritise urgent calls appropriately.
• Whatever time of the morning you ring your details will be added to a queue for a clinician to call back. Depending on the issue, this could be a doctor, nurse or Clinical Pharmacist. During this call the clinician will assess your need and if you need to be seen on the same day you will be booked for an appointment.
• There may be multiple other options for you if you do not need to be urgently seen on the same day. These may include: advice over the telephone, a prescription or booking a suitable future appointment.
• Urgent medical calls will still be accepted 2pm-6.30pm and a duty doctor will be available if you have an urgent problem that cannot wait until the following morning.
• If you require a medication review, this can also be dealt with by our Clinical Pharmacists on the telephone.

The College Practice is a very busy surgery and we take a large volume of calls each day. Because of this we have introduced an alternative way of contacting us which will eliminate the need for you to use your phone initially. Engage Consult is a system which allows you to e-mail the practice with your specific health issue. It will ask you questions about your symptoms to form a medical history and then compiles a report for the clinician to read. The information gathered assists clinical decision making for the next steps – see the patient, call with advice, refer or prescribe. You can find the link on our website www.thecollegepractice.co.uk

We are very lucky to have a wide range of staff to support you with your healthcare needs. Working alongside our doctors we have specialist and prescribing nurses, a Paramedic and two Clinical Pharmacists.  

We also have access to a Health Trainer to help you with your health and lifestyle, a Health & Social Care Coordinator for times where you may need additional living support, a Primary Care Mental Health Specialist and a Physiotherapist.

College Road is also a training practice so we regularly have GP Registrars on placement as well as Nurses, Physician Associates, Paramedics and Pharmacy trainees.

Alex Willoughby

Practice Manager