Utilising appointments to their full potential
Please can we encourage our patients to use Community Pharmacy referrals, as well as our First Contact Physiotherapist team, Advanced Practitioner team and our Social Prescribing team which can be accessed through our Patient Coordinators at Mendip Vale. We hope that by using all services available to us, and our patients, we will be able to improve the demand on our appointments system and maximise our appointment capacity.
Our community pharmacy colleagues are able to see patients for many minor ailment symptoms, and our Patient Coordinators are able to refer all females between age 16 – 64 (and not pregnant) if they report that they have a UTI and answer “Yes” to two of the following questions :
• Is it painful to urinate?
• Is your urine cloudy?
• Are you having to get up in the night to urinate more than before
Additionally, we have an eConsult service which is for routine clinical issues only and can be accessed on our website. If a patient has a clinical query that requires attention in the next 48 hours, patients are asked to contact the surgery by telephone.
We also have our routine GP appointments to offer patients if the above services are not suitable. We are currently looking at a 2-3 week timescale for all routine appointments with a GP. If a matter is urgent we can add patients to our Duty Dr list where patients will be contacted on the day.
Please note, that our call volumes are at their highest between 0800-1100 every morning, so unless a call is urgent, we are encouraging our patients to call after this period which we hope will improve the time you are waiting for our Patient Coordinators to answer your call.
By using all services available to us, we avoid patients calling back the following day, and we utilise our appointments to their full potential.
