"Appointment"

Hi

Thank you for feeding back to us. We have made a recent change on the phone system that should make it easier to get through for Wibsey patients (this does seem to be working now as per the previous comment left here earlier today). But even with this change we only have 30 incoming lines and if these are all busy as they are for a short period at 8.15 each morning it will take a few tries to get past the engaged tone. We could add more lines but then you would be sat in the queue longer, and if we employed more staff to answer the phones more quickly then we would have less appointments as we would not have the money to pay for GPs and other clinical staff!

We do now operate a telephone triage system at Wibsey and the GP assesses whether or not they need to see the patient - they are well trained to asses this on the phone and to do this in a safe manner and using this system enables us to provide care to more patients each day, saves many an unnecessary trip in to the practice and means we have the capacity to see all patients that do need to be seen the ability to give them an appointment.

With Muscular Skeletal problems we do often signpost people to a physio as they are often better placed to assess the problem than a GP and saves you the time of seeing a GP and then being referred on. We are being encouraged to do this increasingly as part of a national programme to develop "active signposting" and all patients will increasingly see staff directing patients to the best place for their care as quickly as possible - and this will increasingly not be the GP.

Kind Regards

Nick Nurden

Business Manager