Patient Access
Running appointments on time
It is important for us to keep all our appointments running on time. We feel that our patients can help us to do this.
Your GP can only discuss with you the problem for which you have booked the appointment. This is to ensure that appointments run on time.
If you wish to discuss a number of issues or problems with the GP, please make this clear at the time of booking your appointment. It may be possible to book a double appointment.
Please do not book a double appointment unless you absolutely need it as this can impact unnecessarily on other patients who wish to book appointments.
If you no longer need your appointment, please inform the surgery as soon as possible. We can offer any unused or cancelled appointments to other patients.
Wasted appointments
It is the responsibility of all patients to keep the appointments they have booked and where they are no longer needed, it is important to contact the surgery as soon as possible so that the appointment can be offered to another patient.
On average, 1500 to 1700 appointments are missed every year where patients ‘Did Not Attend’ their appointments. This is a remarkable 266 hours of appointment time which represents more than 2 weeks of appointment time within the surgery. This is a remarkable waste of practice appointment time and we would like our patients to help us to reduce this figure.
If a patient fails to attend an appointment on 2 occasions within a 6 month period without informing the surgery, the practice will write to the patient to explain that this is not acceptable.
Where a patient continues to fail to attend, the patient will be asked to register at another surgery.
Please ensure that you inform the surgery as soon as possible where you cannot attend your appointment if you are signed up to receive SMS messages you can cancel your appointment at the time your reminder is sent.