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Booking appointments

Story from nhs.uk

"Booking appointments"

About: Spring Hill Practice

The system for booking appointments is very divisive and unhelpful. The telephone recording states you should call before 10am to ensure you have a telephone consultation, however you are unable to book an appointment in advance on the phone even if you call before 10. This system does not respect people’s time or work commitments and essentially discourages patients from attending the surgery for things that are considered ‘non emergencies’. The only way to book appointments in advance (up to 24 hours) is to register for the online services which still requires you to go to the surgery to pick up a form but not to see a doctor.

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Responses

Response from Spring Hill Practice 4 years ago
Spring Hill Practice

Submitted on 07/12/2019 at 15:02
Published on nhs.uk at 15:25

I am sorry to hear that you have had difficulty booking an appointment. As you say, our appointment system allows you book a telephone appointment online 24 hours in advance, at a time that is convenient for you. The doctor will then call you back at this time and either assist you on the phone, signpost you to another service or arrange a time for you to come in to the surgery for a face to face appointment. If you are unable to use online services then we try to offer offer anyone who calls before 10am a telephone appointment on that day. We now have appointments from 7.30am until 7.30pm to try and help access for those who work. We appreciate that no appointment system is perfect, but this system allows us to offer more appointments and help more patients each day and means that patients don't have to wait a long time to be seen. We offer routine and emergency appointments. If all the routine appointments have been used on a particular day and a patient calls up with an urgent issue, we have a duty doctor who can assist them. If you are struggling with our appointment system, please contact the practice and a member of our team will do their best to help you. I hope you have a more positive experience in the future.

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