Appointment System

Our GP appointment system is made up of appointment slots. For each slot, we designate them with a slot type for specific types of consultations.

Duty GP List

If you report a new and urgent problem, this is triaged by the reception team (under specific guidelines from the GP’s). If you were to fit that criteria then you would be booked a telephone call for that morning or afternoon. Some of the duty GP telephone calls may be re-allocated by the duty GP to our first contact Paramedic based on the booking notes. Following the telephone consultation, if the GP or paramedic feels that you need to be seen face to face then this is arranged either same day or the following day. Our duty GP list remains open all day and isn’t capped. This helps to avoid the 8am rush.

Urgent on the day Telephone Consultations

We also offer some urgent on the day Telephone consultations as well to help with duty list.

Routine Telephone consultations/Face to Face consultations

These appointments are for ongoing and non-urgent issues. The appointment book is set up four weeks in advance. Any longer and we find our non-attendance rates increase which is very wasteful.

All our routine telephone consultations are released in stages –

•         Some 3 weeks prior to the appointment date
•         Some 1 week prior to the appointment date

Face to Face consultations are released 3 weeks prior to the appointment date.

Releasing appointments this way helps us to manage demand and prevent long wait times.

Whilst the above is the standard, there will of course be the occasional exceptions to the above based on clinical need.