Dear Patients,

We have been listening to your feedback and understand how important access to appointments and continuity of care are for our patients. Therefore, we have invited NHS England’s Time for Care team to help the process and provide support and an objective oversight. This also brings a wealth of experience of other practices nationally and allows us to work in collaboration with them.  By signing up to The Accelerate Programme, we are currently in the process of re-designing our appointment system, to hopefully improve both of these over the next few weeks.

What happens when you phone for an appointment?

We have made huge improvements to our telephone system. Our call queue holds a maximum of 15 calls at any one time. Our call reports confirm that we are currently answering our calls on average under 10 minutes.

Our Patient Service Advisors are experienced and trained to help you get the right help from the right person at the right time. When you call to book an appointment, they have been tasked with asking you a series of questions in order to:

• Direct you to see the most appropriate healthcare professional
• Ensure you are dealt with as efficiently as possible
• Ensure that we have the most up to date details for you, which will help us to provide the best healthcare that we can for you
• Help our clinicians to prioritise those in need of urgent care

By working with our Patient Service Advisor team, we can make sure you get seen at an appropriate time that works for you. They will frequently speak to the Drs in the practice to make sure they are directing your query correctly.

If your problem is not urgent or an emergency, we will talk to you about the next available appointment that is convenient for you.

Other Services

Remember our practice is not just about the Drs we have an ever-increasing number of services that may be able to help with your query, for example the team can connect you with:

Local pharmacy (the pharmacist will contact you direct)

First Contact Physio

Appointment with the Nurse, Healthcare assistant or Practice Pharmacist

Emergency Dentist

Podiatry

Sexual Health Clinic

Physician Associate

Health & Wellbeing Coach

Social Prescribing Link Worker

Minor Eye Clinic

IAPT

Self-care

You will find more information with regards to these services on our website.

We really want to work with you to provide you with the best possible service, if you would like to provide us with any feedback we would welcome you to join our Patient Group (PPG). Please click the link to be redirected to our General Information page from here if you open the PPG section you can find all the details there.