Welcome to The New Surgery

Practice Manager update 7th April 2022

Like many areas of the NHS the practice is experiencing a high amount of staff sickness due to COVID19.  Healthcare staff are still required to test on a regular basis and isolate if positive. Please do take this into account when you speak to a member of the practice as staff may be covering areas they are not familiar with.

The Surgery door is open for patients to see a receptionist face to face. Face masks must still be worn within the surgery as this is a healthcare setting, we ask all of our patients to cooperate with this. If you have an appointment to see your GP or a Nurse you should inform Reception on arrival. All GP consultations continue to be initially on the phone and as previously, if necessary, during this consultation you will be booked a face to face appointment by the GP.

E-consults are available between 8am and 2pm each day.  We are seeing a high volume of eConsults, therefore in order for us to be able to manage capacity we may have to change the timings of the availability.

Our phone lines are very busy – we are seeing approx. 900 – 1100 incoming calls per day and we have a team of receptionists answering these as quickly as they can, please do hang on the phone and a member of staff will get to you. if you hang up and call back you are then put to the back of the queue.  We are working closely with our phone provider to look at alternative options for our phone system to see if it is possible to get queue positioning enabled.

A few things patients can do to help:

• If you are calling to see if your prescription has been sent to your pharmacy then please try the pharmacy in the first instance.
• If you are calling to chase your hospital appointment then please call the number on the paper work you have been given. We have the same number to call as patients and as such this can take a staff member off of answering the calls for up to 30minutes chasing a single hospital referral.
• If you are calling for your test results – please have a look online if you have access to the NHS app or SystmOnline as you may be able to view your results on there.
• If you are calling to request a medical certificate – please submit an eConsult between 8am – 2pm and this will be passed to your GP.
• If you are calling as you are unable to see your covid vaccination pass – please call 119 and ask for a referral to the Vaccination Data Resource Service (VDRS) and they will be able to assist in getting the correct information for you. We cannot amend any COVID vaccination records as these are recorded directly by the vaccination centres.

We thank you all our patients for their help and understanding of the above.

Vaccination Certificates

There are two ways to prove you have had the Covid vaccine:

• Download the NHS App
• Call 119 to request a letter of proof