As a valued member of our Practice, we wanted to inform you of some important changes to how care will be accessed at Thurleigh Road moving forwards.
Many of you may be aware of the current pressures on General Practice, not only at Thurleigh Road, but nationwide. Our practice population has grown to almost 15,000 patients, and the number of clinicians has decreased recently because of funding and the national shortage of GP’s. The overall demand for appointments has increased greatly and is at an all-time high and we understand how frustrating this is for our patients.
NHS England have recently published a plan to aid recovery of Primary Care. The plan stipulates that all patients should receive an assessment of need when they contact the practice and that an appropriate appointment should be booked, preferably within a two week time frame of the contact.
Our priority is to make sure that we attend to patients who require urgent medical attention before attending to patients with more routine issues. In order for the Practice to achieve this and adhere to the new plan, it will be necessary to introduce an appointment booking system based on clinical need. The most effective way we can achieve this is to adopt online triage.
From Monday 10th July, we request that all enquiries for an appointment are made online. From our website homepage, please select the ‘Submit a new request’ option and if you require an appointment select ‘I want help for a medical issue’. You will then need to fill in an online form, which provides all the information required to safely triage the enquiry. The first person to review the request will be a clinician, who will then decide upon the appropriate course of action. This could be a face-to-face or phone appointment with a member of our multidisciplinary clinical team, or perhaps redirection to another provider such as a local pharmacist or primary eye care service.
We appreciate that not everyone may have access to our website. In this case, we will be happy to receive your phone call and one of our Clinical Support team will assist you to complete the form. Our vulnerable patients will continue to be welcome in reception in addition.
The medical online request form will be available from 8am to 6.30pm Monday to Friday, or until the Practice has reached capacity. If this is the case, you will be notified and redirected to another service. For urgent issues please continue to telephone the practice. Outside of these hours please call 111 as you have done in the past.
We hope that you understand the need for change. Your support in helping us to deliver the right care, in the right place and at the right time, is greatly appreciated. If you have any questions or need any advice on how to complete an online request, or the general process moving forward, please feel free to speak to a member of staff who would be happy to help.
In appreciation of your continued cooperation.
The Partners. Thurleigh Road Practice
Dr I. Nasiruddin. Dr C. Ellis. Dr S. Ovaisi. Dr J. Christopher. Dr E. Liu.