Need a same day appointment, the doctor may call you back first!

The practice is experiencing a sustained increase in the number of people who want appointments and the number of people who say they need to be seen on the day they have rung up for an appointment. We regularly monitor the situation. Last week 2,520 patients had appointments with a healthcare professional, either a doctor, nurse or healthcare assistant.

We look at at how the number of contacts to the practice is increasing and in the last three months of 2014 compared to a similar period in 2013 we saw nearly 6% more people (adjusted for list size growth). We also count the number of patients seen by the duty doctor. The duty doctor sees everyone who wants a same day appointment. It is busy if the duty doctor sees more than 50 patients in one day and over the last four weeks the duty doctor has seen 50 or more patients on 13 out of 20 days.

The practice feels that this situation is just not sustainable. We are changing our same day appointments system so that if you ring and request a same day appointment the receptionist will ask details or your problems and a doctor will call you back. This is so that the duty doctor can assess whether you need to been seen and whether any other outcome is appropriate.

We hope this will enable us to continue to treat our patients in the safest and most appropriate way and will continue to monitor this situation for the foreseeable future.


Comments

  1. Unknown29 June 2015 at 09:06

    Execellen !
    love to read this.. post..
    Thnks a lot for sharing this valuable content...

    TOSHIBA PVM-375AT

    ReplyDelete

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