How to book an appointment
- call the surgery on 01992 654004
- in person
- use our online services
Information on appointment system
When a patient contacts the surgery for an appointment, our care navigators (reception team members) who are fully trained will ask you about your medical condition to triage and direct you to the appropriate medical professional or service which would be most suitable to help you with your medical conditions. This is called care navigation.
If you are offered an appointment, these are not necessarily on the same day or at Abbey Road Surgery. Care navigation (Signposting) offering other services such as Pharmacy First, Physiotherapist, Self-referral services, 111, Minor illness nurse based at another surgery who are part of our PCN (Primary care network), etc.
We will continue to offer a combination of both routine telephone and face to face appointments. You will be advised the best approach for your needs.
You can also contact us for non-urgent clinical and admin enquiries via Accurx, an online service available from our website under contact us online.
We kindly remind patients that consultations with our doctors or any clinical team members are only available by appointment. Approaching a doctor or any clinical team members outside of a scheduled appointment is not permitted.
Cancellations
If you cannot keep an appointment, please let us know as soon as possible if you are unable to make your appointment by calling us on 01992 654004 press Option 1 to leave a message with your name, date of birth, day and time of your appointment to be cancelled after the tone. Any appointment cancellation request less than 1 hour before the appointment will not be accepted as we may not have enough time to offer the cancelled appointment(s) to other patients in need.
However, the much more common cause of delays is that several patients each surgery simply underestimate how much time their various problems take.
In general the NHS expects GPs to deal with your problems within a 10 minute appointment. Inevitably, numerous issues takes very much more than 10 minute leading to delays for the next patients.
Help us to help you get the best out of your consultation
- If you have several problems summarise them for the doctor briefly at the beginning. The doctor can then help you prioritise the most urgent or significant issues. You may probably then need to make a further appointment on another day to deal with the less significant problems. Please understand why the doctor may advise this.
- Use your appointment time effectively and help us keep to time for everybody’s benefit by telling us of only one significant problem per consultation. However we can usually deal with 2 simple problems effectively during your appointment. The more you throw at us – the less effective we will be.
- Please be prepared for the doctor to advise that you make a second appointment to discuss the unrelated and less significant issues. It’s safer for you – and helpful to those following.
- Your appointment is for one person only – please don’t ask us to deal with a second person ‘while I am here’.
- Please don’t use your consultation time to obtain repeat prescriptions. Doctors do not issue repeat medications which are already on patient’s repeat medication list. Please find out more information on how to request your repeat medications how to request your repeat medications.
If there is a particular letter or result you want to discuss please tell the receptionist in advance so we can see it is available. Unfortunately we can experience very significant delays in receiving letters from hospitals over which we have no control. (several weeks sometimes)