It is important to note that there are some rules for appointments which are summarised below:
- Appointments will be either telephone or face-to-face consultations for routine appointments only. Patients have the choice.
- Telephone appointments are NOT timed. You will be called back AM or PM.
- Telephone appointments will be attempted a maximum of three times. If you miss the calls, you will need to book a new appointment.
- Appointments can be booked up to 6 weeks in advance.
- No lists. The clinicians have a set amount of time allocated per appointment to ensure they are delivering safe care to all patients. They can only deal with one issue at a time. Multiple issues require multiple appointments.
- A maximum of 3 future booked appointments per patient at a time.
- Misuse of the appointment service will result in limited future bookings, either temporarily or permanently.
- Any inappropriate/incorrect bookings will be turned away and a new appointment arranged for the next available slot. This will most likely not be for the same day. For example, if you book a telephone appointment but turn up at the Practice expecting to be seen, you will not be given a face-to-face appointment.
- Urgent, on the day appointments can currently only be booked by telephoning or visiting the Practice.
- We DO NOT offer a walk-in-and-wait service
- It is anticipated that face-to-face appointments will be a longer wait time than telephone consultations.
Please be mindful that we are still actively recruiting and training new staff, both clinical and non-clinical. It will be some time before we are at full staffing capacity so wait times will be higher than we would like right now. To ensure we are delivering a safe service to our patients, our clinicians have limited capacity each day. When we reach our daily capacity, it may be necessary for us to cap our access and signpost urgent cases to other providers.