It is a continual struggle to try to run an appointment system that will suit the majority of our patients, but we are willing to trial new ways of working to help us strike a fair balance. As such, we have revised our appointment system to enable us to provide a better service. This will be effective from Wednesday 1st May.
The changes we are adopting are as follows:
- In addition to telephone triage slots, all GPs will now have routine appointments that can be booked in advance with our reception team
- All home visit requests will be triaged by a clinician to either arrange a visit or deal with your request over the phone if appropriate
- Telephone triage will now only be done by our GPs and not the nursing team
We are also making changes to the way in which we cater for patients who feel they need to be seen as a matter of urgency but we have no appointments remaining for that day. These patients will be added to the duty doctor’s telephone triage list, the GP will triage the reason an appointment has been requested, and then make contact with the patient to book an appointment or ask reception to do so.
However, please be aware that there is a finite number of slots on the duty doctor’s telephone triage list and once it is fully booked, patients will be signposted to the walk-in centre or A&E as appropriate.