APPOINTMENTS
Your appointment with the doctor, nurse Practitioner or practice nurse is 10 minutes, please respect this time.
You can:
• Pre-book an appointment 3 months in advance. Approximately a third of our appointments are pre bookable with doctors and nurse Practitioner. practice nurse and Phlebotomists appointments are all pre-bookable.
• Phone the surgery at 8.00am for an on the day appointment. Two thirds of our appointments are on the day for patients’ convenience. There are two receptionists taking your calls from 8.00 am, please stay on the line we will answer as soon as possible.
• Telephone Consultations: You can request a doctor or nurse Practitioner consultation over the phone. Ring reception in the normal way; the receptionist will take a contact number and a brief description of the problem. The doctor or nurse Practitioner can see these on their screen. If you ring in the morning you would normally be contacted before 1pm, if you call in the afternoon it would normally be before 6.30. There are always exceptions to this if the surgery is experiencing a high number of urgent appointments that day. Please note that this type of appointment is not an acceptable route for ordering medication you may have run out of, advise the receptionist who may be able to help.
• Home Visits: If you require a home visit, please call reception and request this. The receptionist will take your contact number as the doctor may telephone you beforehand. They will also ask a brief description of the problem, this is to ascertain the urgency of the problem which the doctor can see on his screen.
• Emergency appointments: If you feel that your appointment cannot wait until the next day and the surgery has no appointments left to offer please make this known to the receptionist, who can book it as an emergency. The receptionist will take a contact number and a brief description of the problem. The doctor may contact you to discuss before your appointment.
• Children under the age of 12 years: will always be seen or contacted the same day. Let the receptionist know the age of the child when contacting the surgery, a contact number will be taken and a brief description of the problem. The doctor or nurse practitioner may contact you before you appointment if you have been given an emergency one.
If you cannot attend your appointment please contact us to cancel. There are several ways to do this:
• Phone the surgery
• Text our dedicated mobile (number on front of this newsletter)
• Through our website
(only if you are cancelling an appointment more than 24 hours in the future)
• Fax us on 01204 462881
The average DNA (did not attend) rate each month is 80 appointments. These could have been offered to other patients if they had been cancelled.