Just a little note from me – Marie, the Practice Manager – about how our appointments book works that I hope our patients will find useful and informative.
- There is a good mix of online available appointments for face2face and telephone. We have to offer a mix to meet patient expectations.
- The face2face will usually be booked up first however, if patients call us then we can and do change telephone appointments to face2face. Unfortunately, the apps aren’t intelligent to allow patients to do this online, and as has happened, if patients book a phone appointment online but add notes to say they are coming in, or vice versa, the GP doesn’t see that at our end, so it creates big problems and wasted appointments for us and you.
- We have 1 GP Partner in every day and in addition we have at least 1 locum doctor in Practice each day. They can all see face2face or telephone appointments.
- The remaining GP’s who work from home can only offer telephone appointments. They work from home not out of choice, but because there is no room in Practice due to the additional roles we have to offer now, for example the podiatrist, physiotherapist, mental health practitioner, and locum doctors using their rooms so we can offer these additional appointments.
- In addition, the Advanced Clinical Practitioners all work IN Practice and we offer a mix of face2face and telephone appointments. They work in the same way the doctors do. They are qualified to assess, diagnose, and treat a wide range of medical conditions. Patients benefit from their expertise in managing both acute and chronic illnesses, as well as receiving guidance on preventative healthcare and measures.
- We can’t offer or book appointments more than 2 weeks ahead either, this does cause problems for patient and Practice alike. This is directly a government diktat!! We expect this to change, for the better, from April at which point I am concerned about the book being filled for weeks in advance, which doesn’t help access. We’ll be watching this carefully.
- For certain popular GP’s it can be virtually impossible to book any kind of appointment for patients or for our reception team. Their patients seem to me to get a priority service that others don’t get and I’m looking into how this can be addressed. It’s nothing reception team, nor I have authority over, sadly.
- We have removed all our Advanced Clinical Practitioner (ACP) appointments from online booking as there are a small number of conditions don’t see. Patients were booking in with them inappropriately, and it led to wasted appointments and greater demand on other clinicians. Reception use these ACP appointments for telephone bookings for both face2face and telephone appointments as they know which conditions the ACPs don’t see.
- Demand for appointments is completely off the scale. Our list size is steady at around 9400 patients and has been for several years. We have no desire to increase this as we simply couldn’t cope. We have strict policy in place to manage our list for the benefit of our patients, and our clinicians.
- Nationally GPs are seeing more patients than ever before, and demand is growing. Here is a link to information on our website about appointments which explains how we are working
- Here is a link to the concerns of General Practice nationally The future of General Practice is at stake.
- I audited our appointment provision based on national requirement in August last year.
- We are required to provide 674 appointments per week based on our list size of 9355. We actually provide 961 appointments per week, table below.
- The cost of locum doctors is not sustainable, and we have dropped around 40 locum appointments each week because of this.
- We still offer 911 appointments which is significantly above what we are required to offer.
- Some Practices only allow on the day booking. This is fine for those wishing an on the day appointment but not for patients wishing to book in advance.
- Some Practices operate a total triage system which, from what I hear, doesn’t allow anyone to book anything!
- Our system, with embargos which lift on the day at 08:00am 1 day before, 2 days before and 14 days before allows patients to plan. It’s not perfect but are trying to accommodate every demographic.
- Lastly, by way of improving online/telephone booking for patients and staff, and to make access much fairer, the time that embargo slots release has been changed from 07:00am to 08:00am.
- Patients who go online or use an app could, up until mid-February, book appointments from 7am, this is ok if you’re up and not busy at that time.
- When reception team start at 8am there were very few slots left and we feel, after discussion at the February Reception meeting, that this was a problem so that’s why it’s been changed.
- We’ll monitor and see what occurs!
- I’ll also look at changing some of the telephone appointments to face2face, for the doctors who are IN Practice to see if this makes a difference.
