Appointment Demand December 2022

As you are aware demand has well overtaken capacity in primary care. To give you an idea of what our practice is facing, on Monday alone our on call GP who already had 2 full clinics, had 42 urgent extras added to their triage list. At this point we had to start diverting some patients to 111.

Our prebookable GP appointments are fully booked until mid January but we do have a small amount of on the day appointments which we open both online and for our reception team to book into at 8.30am each day.

Once these are gone, the receptionist will ask about your symptoms to assess whether it is something our Advanced Nurse Practitioner (ANP) can deal with or whether you have an urgent/routine problem. Anything urgent will normally be added to the on call GP’s triage list. For everything else unfortunately you may be asked to call again the following day.

We have ANP appointments available next week and they can diagnose and prescribe for most conditions. They can not see pregnant ladies, young babies or mental health problems. This is made clear on their appointments when booking online.

We know it is not ideal and we are trying our best, prioritising those most poorly, sign posting where appropriate and directing those acutely unwell who are not appropriate for primary care to A&E.

Please respect our staff. We still have staff off sick and those left are booking appointments, dealing with queries, registrations, Patient Access requests, organising referrals, baby clinics, answering website queries, scanning on letters, coding information amongst many more duties. We are all trying our best.

Thank you for your understanding.

CCMG