Online Forms
Completing a form online helps to ease the pressure for those who can only use the phones.
We’re trying many ways to improve services with the ever increasing demand despite continually limited resources.
We thank you for your support and understanding.
- The NHS and General Practice are in crisis.
- There are nationwide issue in recruitment.
The situation was already difficult pre-COVID-19 Global Pandemic and now we have had to face the consequences and repercussions that is impacting nearly every industry in the country.
That’s a brilliant question.
More and more people are using services online.
And that’s exactly how we’re hoping to help people who can’t use the internet.
By allowing the many people who can, it hopefully means less pressure and less competition for the phone lines, so those that need more urgent help and can only use phones can have an easier time
Traditionally, everything goes through the telephone line.
So, someone needing some help because they’re feeling unwell, is in the same queue as someone who might just want to double check if they could have extra tablets because they’re going on holiday.
Now this is just an example, but the point we’re trying to make is that there may be ‘less urgent’ queries or ‘routine’ queries that, if organised better, could be dealt with more effectively that means there can be more GP/Nurse time to focus on those that need more time.
That was precisely the reason many GP surgeries adapted a telephone triage model. Not just because of the risk of COVID because many were triaging before COVID. Triaging allowed surgeries to deal with more patients by organising time better so that those that needed help more urgently are provided the help they need.
However, we understand that we need to continue adapting and evolving. Triage may no
Yes.
For the moment as we are developing the service, we are able to receive forms 24 hours of the day, 7 days of the week.
This is because, currently, we are opting to deal with non-urgent requests online.
Our forms aren’t manned 24/7.
We ask for at least 7 working days processing time. However, most forms are completed within 48 hours.
Unfortunately, not yet.
If you need help urgently on the day, phone:
- Castle Surgery during opening hour (8am to 6:30pm Monday to Friday, excluding bank holidays)
- 111 on evenings and weekends if the help you need can’t wait until the surgery opens
- 999 for any life threatening conditions
We’re always looking to evolving and adapting our practices to be able to do more.
Everything adds up. Every consultation that has a ‘whilst I’m here’ query of an extra 5 to 10 minutes, potentially means hours of delays. And our consultations aren’t all that we do. Often, the admin time of arranging referrals/tests/responding to results can generate as much workload as the consultations. Quite often, because we do want to deliver more patient time, our clinicians do this work in their own time.
We hope you will understand that whilst we do care about all of our patients, we also care about our colleagues and our families.
We want to be there to help our community for the long term, and so have to get that right balance. As you may know, stress can be a cause of illness. There’s a limit to the amount of healthy stress any person should persistently receive. Even though many of us CHOSE to go into the healthcare profession, we’re human too. In order for us to make sure we do our best by you and your loved ones, we need to make sure we look after our in-house team too.
As a surgery, even though it’s not obvious, we provide enough appointments that every single of our over 10,000 patients can be seen 5 times a year. We’re working to make changes over the next few years to deliver a better service and improved, personalised, timely care for our patients.
There has to be a limit to the amount of consultations your doctor, nurses and healthcare professionals have to deal with.
This is to make sure that we can work safely.
We need to do this to keep you safe and to prevent our doctors, nurses, healthcare professionals and the wider GP team of receptionists/admin/managers from burning out.
We want to be there, to help our community for the long term and so have to get that right balance. As you may know, stress can be a cause of illness. There’s a limit to the amount of healthy stress any person should persistently receive. Even though many of us CHOSE to go into the healthcare profession, we’re human too. In order for us to make sure we do our best by you and your loved ones, we need to make sure we look after our in-house team too.
As a surgery, even though it’s not obvious, we provide enough appointments that every single of our over 10,000 patients can be seen 5 times a year.ย We’re working to make changes over the next few years to deliver a better service and improved, personalised, timely care for our patients.
We are and have been looking into the various ways we can improve the phone system.
Our online forms is one of these ways.
We absolutely regret that overall, this is a nationwide issue that is affecting nearly all GP surgeries across the country.
It’s not that your doctors and nurses are ‘hiding away’. We are generating tens of thousands of appointments multiple times a year.
However the issue of unprecedented demand, NHS limited resources, recruitment crisis is all crashing together.