Solihull is seeing an increase in coronavirus numbers. With this in mind we wanted to reassure you that the surgery remains open.
The way we have been working since the pandemic began hasn’t changed, we have clinical staff onsite here at Hampton, however, we are following national guidance about primary care. All requests for doctors appointments will be given a phone appointment initially. During this phone call the doctor will decide if a patient needs to be seen face to face, if they do, this will be arranged onsite at the surgery. Where somebody is seen face-to-face this increases considerably the appointment time as the room needs to be cleaned following a Covid protocol afterwards which had implications for the number of appointments that can be offered.
Nursing appointments can be booked over the phone. By organising our services this way we are keeping the number and timings of patients arriving to a minimum to prevent any transmission of covid on the surgery site. This way of working is nationally required and strict infection prevention procedures are in place. This isn’t the way we have ever worked before and we are aware that for some patients they feel worried and anxious that we aren’t here if they needed us. We want to assure you that we are here and all patients who contact us for help with receive help and assessment and treatment of their clinical condition.
At the present time we are working hard to try and catch up reviews of long term conditions such as diabetes and screening that has been delayed, if we contact you please try and attend so we can make sure all is well.
We are starting to call patients for flu vaccination. This year more than ever before it is important that we protect as many patients as possible. Nationally there is concern that a flu outbreak would put more lives at risk and increase pressure on the NHS. If we contact you please attend your appointment.
Similarly, if you do not wish to receive your vaccine please let us know as this means your vaccine can be given to someone else and also reduces the amount of time we spend trying to contact you. There is a national plan this year to record all patients’ ethnic origin and this is in direct response to the covid pandemic. We will ask you for this information when you attend.
We are seeing an increase in patients contacting the surgery by phone as you would expect. This has meant that on occasions some patients have waited longer than normal. We have reviewed our phone calls and over the last three weeks the wait time has been on average less than 1minute 30 seconds. We will keep this under review as winter approaches and we know demand for our services increases.
This fulfils our GMS contract whereby patients are seen in a manner determined by the practice and so patients receive the most appropriate and efficient consultation and the safest for them and the healthcare professional providing it.
Once again we assure you all of our continued vision to provide the best, safest and compassionate primary care service we can. Even in these difficult times we are still here and working hard to serve our community.
Kind Regards
Kirsty Millard- Clinical Lead
Dr's Charlton, Prince, Simpson and Al-Shammary