22 Church Street Weybridge Surrey KT13 8DW

Tel: 01932 828200 Fax: 01932 844902 Appointments: 01932 826025

MEETING YOUR NEEDS

You will have seen in the media that primary care services (such as GP’s, practice nurses, health visitors and district nurses) are under increasing strain. Many areas struggle to recruit doctors and there is now also a national shortage of practice nurses. Meanwhile patient demand for appointments continues to rise for a variety of reasons including –

  • Hospitals transferring more out-patient care back to general practice.
  • Earlier discharge of patients from hospital.
  • Media health campaign e.g. 3 week cough, blood in urine.
  • Lifestyle issues e.g. obesity leading to diabetes and heart disease.
  • Increased numbers of frail elderly (many of whom live alone) who have chronic diseases such as heart failure, respiratory disease.
  • Introduction of new vaccine regimes – for example rotavirus for babies, shingles for the elderly, meningitis for teenagers, flu for young children.
  • Health scare stories in the press.
  • Government initiative to enable those with cancer to die at home.
  • General health anxiety with increased internet use.

It is the role of the GP to coordinate and manage this situation and in this practice we try to balance the needs of all our 13,000 patients.

Routine appointments

In common with most practices across the country the average waiting time for a non-urgent appointment is 1-2 weeks and maybe more if a doctor is particularly popular. We appreciate that patients find it frustrating if our staff can’t offer them exactly what they request. The doctors are happy to give telephone or email advice. We would encourage you to register for our online appointment booking service - please speak to our receptionist or see the website for more details. Please note- THE APPOINTMENTS AVAILABLE ON THE INTERNET ARE IDENTICAL TO THOSE THAT CAN BE OFFERED BY THE RECEPTIONISTS.

Some appointments are kept back and can only be allocated by a doctor if they think it is appropriate. If you believe your condition cannot wait until the next routine available appointment, the reception can ask your GP to contact you to discuss your situation.

Missed appointments

We are currently trying to tackle this issue in order to release more appointments for other patients. For your information, it is not permissible for us to charge these patients. We write to all patients who miss their appointments and will remove patients who frequently miss their appointments. The text reminder service was very popular but unfortunately last August we lost this facility when we had new clinical software. We are currently looking to invest in a compatible texting system and hope to have one in place very soon. Thank you to all our patients who do cancel their appointments. We are aware that our telephone system can cause problems for patients but this is a shared service with others in the building and there are currently no funds available for the NHS to update this.

Urgent appointments

The receptionists will do their best to accommodate you and may suggest an alternative e.g. the Walk in Centre (not suitable for pregnant ladies or children under 2). Otherwise, our duty doctor system allows all urgent cases to be assessed on the day either by phone or face to face. We appreciate that health issues can cause anxiety but please bear in mind that the doctor’s assessment of urgent medical need may not always correlate with your own. The GP will be balancing the care they offer you against that offered to other patients who also feel their situation to be urgent. During a busy day in the winter the duty doctor may be dealing with up to 80 calls a day. The duty doctor can, if deemed necessary, give you a same day surgery appointment- but understandably we are not always able to offer a time slot that exactly suits your requirements.

Surgeries running late

Many patients feel frustrated that surgeries run late. As doctors we also would prefer to keep totime as this delays us attending to other aspects of our job such as reading hospital correspondence about our patients and attending house calls (these patients by definition being much sicker than the patients we tend to see in the surgery). Surgeries can run late for a variety of reasons -

  • Patient needing to be admitted to hospital directly from the surgery e.g. appendicitis, chest pain.
  • Patient attending with a long list of problems which realistically can’t be managed in a standard 10 minute NHS appointment. (Very common)
  • A patient maybe become emotionally distressed during a consultation.
  • The doctor may have to break bad news.
  • The GP may be called to the phone to talk to paramedics in attendance at a patient’s home.

We do our best to manage these situations as they develop but we would ask for your patience. If you are concerned you or your child’s health has suddenly deteriorated whilst you are in the waiting room please alert the receptionist.

Prescriptions

As with all practices in the UK, we are required to prescribe medicines (e.g. antibiotics) in accordance with good practice, local guidelines and to adhere to the principles of best value for money. Our yearly budget spent on drugs for our practice alone is over £1million.

Some drugs are restricted to being prescribed by consultants only (e.g. fertility medications). We may decline to prescribe drugs recommended by a private consultant if they don’t meet the criteria under which we are required to work. There are limitations with certain formulations e.g. premixed baby milk cartons, vitamin and food supplements, certain branded contraceptives. We work with our allocated prescribing adviser (a pharmacist) who guides and closely monitors all our prescriptions. If you are unhappy with the prescribing decision made by your doctor, the prescribing advisor will contact you directly to discuss your concerns. You can request your repeat prescription in writing by completing a request slip at reception, by post, email, on the internet if you have signed up for on line services or via your Pharmacy but please allow 48 hours (2 working days) for your prescription to be prepared.

Referrals to Secondary Care

Once you have seen your doctor and have planned a referral for a specialist’s opinion at hospital, a letter will be sent to the appropriate provider for an appointment. Once received, referrals are usually triaged by the consultant to decide the urgency of the referral and then forwarded to the appointment centre for allocation of an appointment. The guidelines from Ashford & St Peter’s Hospital recommend that a patient will be seen within 18 weeks from receipt of referral to consultant appointment - for a routine referral. You should expect to hear about your appointment after approximately 4 – 6 weeks.

Complaints

We are aware, along with many practices across the country of an increasing number of complaints either verbal, written or on internet sites. Whilst it is important that any medical issues should be brought to our attention, we are concerned that many complaints now involve patients’ unrealistic expectations of the services that can be provided in the current economic climate. We hope this leaflet will give you a clearer understanding of the challenges faced by general practice.

Patient Participation Group

This is a group of patients who volunteer to help support us with ideas and suggestions in delivering good care. We meet twice a year or they provide feedback via the internet. We would like as wide a variety of patients as possible to be part of this group. The Group vetted this letter before it was released. If you would like to become involved and help to shape the delivery of care in Weybridge, please contact our practice manager for further details.

Thank you

Church Street Practice

Partners: Drs Fozard, Langton, Brown, Styles, & Wilding and Mrs V Millis

Associates: Drs Patel,Grocock & Trathen

This Practice is part of NHS North West Surrey Clinical Commissioning Group