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Access to appointments in January 2019

Story from nhs.uk

"Access to appointments in January 2019"

About: Sheepcot Medical Centre

Due to high demand for Doctor and Nurse appointments in January, and non availability of GP appointments I have been forced to attend a private GP practice for prescriptions. Also noticed in reception area, the number of patients who failed to attend booked appointments was advertised as 50 for one week. Text reminders are essential. If patients can’t attend then they need to inform the surgery ASAP so an urgent needing patient can take up an appointment.

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Responses

Response from Sheepcot Medical Centre 5 years ago
Sheepcot Medical Centre

Submitted on 13/02/2019 at 09:43
Published on nhs.uk at 12:06

We are very disappointed to hear of your experiences. It would be helpful to understand more of the background issues as to why you had a attend a private clinic to source a prescription.

We have had for a significant period of time, the availability of a texting service at Sheepcot Medical Centre. If we have patient's mobile phone details, when patients book appointments they are automatically sent a text message reminder on 2 separate occasions prior to their appointment. Within the message there is a link that can be used to automatically cancel their appointment if they are unable to attend. Once this reply is received, the appointment is automatically cancelled from the system.

Therefore the 50 patients that 'didn't attend' that particular week, would have been significantly increased without the background IT we have in place.

It would be appreciated if you could kindly contact our Practice Manager, so we can further discussions regarding your prescription problems .

With thanks

Drs Jackson, Lee, Saad & Lwin

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