HIGH ROAD FAMILY DOCTORS
APPOINTMENTS
For those of you who are experiencing difficulty in getting through to the Surgery or feel that you are not offered an appointment as soon as you would like, we are listening to your comments and advise as follows:
DOCTORS
Each Doctor when on duty has 10 appointments in the morning and 10 appointments in the afternoon. These are made up of a mixture of the following
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urgent “on the day” slots
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pre-bookable appointments
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slots that Nurses book into
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slots for Doctors to book into for patients they are concerned about
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slots for patients with Long Term Conditions
A Doctor also has to deal with all Pathology results, Referrals, Clinic letters, Prescription queries and Tasks from the multi-disciplinary team members. All of this has to be dealt with daily, when the Doctor is not seeing patients.
NURSES
Our Nurses have a mixture of book on day appointments and pre-bookable appointments. Each Nurse has their own speciality:
· one is more for Diabetes / Mental Health concerns / Female concerns e.g. Menopause
· and the other is our Respiratory Nurse, e.g. Asthma, COPD, breathing issues.
They both deal with all other routine Nurse appointments too.
We have a Health Care Assistant who deals with routine Nurse appointments. All 3 of the team will see up to 15-20 patients morning AND afternoon during each of their shifts. They also have to deal with queries from staff/patients, print blood test forms, assess readings patients have supplied for them, Referrals, Clinic letters, Audits and some prescription queries.
RECEPTION & ADMIN
Our Reception/Admin Team work non-stop during their shifts, taking continuous phones calls, queries from patients which may then need to be passed to another staff member. They deal with all admin duties too, including completing referrals from a Clinician, making referrals that are within their scope, completing all repeat prescription requests, dealing with tasks from Clinicians, making calls, texts, letters to patients, inviting patients for screening clinics, scanning all documents on to patient records – the list is endless.
Therefore, as I hope you will appreciate, the working day is extremely long and everyone is working as hard as they possibly can to accommodate as many of our 4000 patients every day of the working week.
We appreciate how upset and frustrated you may feel at times, but please bear in mind just how hard we are all working and trying our very best to care for you, our patients.
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Out-of-Hours & Weekend Appointments
GP practices across Benfleet Primary Care Network are working together to provide the right services at a time which is convenient for you. We’ve listened to feedback from people in our local area, and we are making changes to our out-of-hours appointments to deliver better services for you.
The new way of delivering out-of-hours appointments will give you:
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Access to more healthcare professionals. This new service will be delivered by professionals including GPs, Nurses (Advanced Nurse Practitioners (ANP's), Healthcare Assistants (HCA's), Practice Nurses, First Contact Physiotherapists (FCP's) and Pharmacists.
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More choice about the type of appointment you want. These include a mixture of in-person face-to-face appointments and remote telephone appointments.
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Make it more convenient for you to travel to out-of-hours appointments. These appointments are being planned and delivered locally at both Rushbottom Lane Surgery and The Hollies Surgery.
From Saturday 1 October 2022, out-of-hours appointments will be available from 6.30pm to 8pm on weekdays, and from 9am to 5pm on Saturdays.
When we asked local people what you wanted from these appointments you told us you wanted additional GP and Nurse appointments on weekday evenings and weekends. In response we have an additional 15.5 hours of GP appointments and 9.95 hours of nurse appointments available each week (subject to bank holidays and Time to Learn afternoons).
Out-of-hours appointments were previously planned by the Integrated Care Board (ICB) on behalf of many GP practices in a bigger area. From Saturday 1 October 2022, this is now being planned and delivered locally by Primary Care Networks (PCNs).
We are working together with other GP practices in our local area as part of the Benfleet Primary Care Network. You can find out more about Benfleet Primary Care Network on our PCN website at www.benfleetpcn.nhs.uk
An out-of-hours appointment might not be at your regular GP surgery. When you book an appointment, you will be told where the appointment will be.
These appointments will not be available as walk-in appointments. You will need to book them in advance.
To book an out-of-hours appointment, you should contact your regular GP practice in the usual way. They will advise you on the appointments which are available, and which healthcare professional is the right person to help you.
If you need medical help now but it's not an emergency, you can also go to 111 online or call 111.