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Booking an appointment.

Story from nhs.uk

"Booking an appointment. "

About: Village Medical Group

The recorded message when phoning the Village Surgery tells us we can book online. When you go online to book an appointment we are told the service is currently suspended. A reason given is that if you book online you may be visiting the surgery to fulfil this appointment but have coronavirus. Two thoughts; I only wanted a telephone appointment, and now I have to go through the nightmare that is trying to have my call answered at 8.15 in the morning when everyone else is calling. There must be a way that online booking can still be utilised for certain situations, then less people would call at 8.15 and get stressed.

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Responses

Response from Village Medical Group 3 years ago
Village Medical Group

Submitted on 07/08/2020 at 08:47
Published on nhs.uk at 23:01

Dear Patient,

When the coronavirus pandemic first hit we had to review our ways of working in order to make sure both patients and staff stay safe.

A decision was made to stop all face-to-face appointments from being booked unless a patient had already had a remote consultation with a member of the clinical team. We found as a practice that by leaving telephone appointments available to be booked online, unfortunately some patients turned up to the practice for these appointments when they shouldn't have.

The decision was made that in the interest of patient safety we would temporarily suspend all online bookings. This decision is constantly being reviewed and we hope to re-enable access to online bookings again in the near future.

As a practice that previously listed nearly all of our appointments available for booking online this has been a big change for both staff and patients and we thank all patients for bearing with us through these times and hope we can return to our normal ways of working in near future.

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