HELP US TO HELP YOU

FROM THE PARTNERS AND ALL AT WILLOW PRACTICE

We continue to look forward to helping you with any health or care needs. Despite unprecedented demands, we continue to strive to offer excellent access and ways to communicate with us.  However, we are aware that our phone lines remain very busy. To remedy this, we have recruited new reception staff, but with ongoing staff sickness and training, we only have so many hands available to answer the phones as well as ensuring we process emails and prescriptions in a timely manner.

This is a long newsletter with updates regarding our efforts to maintain provision of sufficient access to our services for you when you need us at a time when the NHS is still under unprecedented pressure.

Help us to help you by ensuring that all urgent calls are answered as quickly as possible and that we keep GP appointments available for medical problems.

• Routine GP Face to Face and telephone appointments are both now bookable online! Please book online for all routine GP appointments if possible, to help keep the lines clear for urgent problems or for those who can’t access online.  If you require access please register here for the AIRMID app where you can also access your results, letters and records. If you need passwords or help with getting online please email us at [email protected].
• Double appointments are available for those patients with a number of or complex issues to discuss. Please request when booking or book two appointments next to each other online with a comment about why two have been booked.
• Tell us what the appointment is for. If booking online or via reception, it is really helpful for us to know what problem(s) you are wanting to be dealt with.
• Help us to see you urgently during the same session. Please phone before 11am for morning emergencies and before 5pm for afternoon emergencies.
• We are no longer able to accept prescription requests by telephone save for exceptional circumstances. Phone requests not only block our phone lines but have the risk of inaccurate requests.  The quickest and most accurate way to order your repeat medication is to do so via online access. We will continue to accept paper prescription requests if online access is not possible. Please note that paper prescription requests are slower to process as our staff need to transfer the request onto the computer system on your behalf (whilst they could be answering calls or emails). If requests are made online they go directly to the prescribing team to process. Please save our time and get a faster service by getting and using online access or ask a family member to do so on your behalf.
• Patchs. This is an alternative way to contact the Practice without having to call us. Patchs is our new Online Consultation Tool which is easier to use than its predecessor, e-Consult, and you can find it on our home page or here.
• Please email us on [email protected] or speak to our admin team for all “admin” issues. Our secretary can chase referrals or hospital appointments if needed. GP appointments are often used for chasing hospital appointments, getting results of tests requested by the hospital, requesting a referral or booking tests that have already been discussed.  If you have a prescription query or difficulties getting medication our pharmacy team might also be able to help you. Every GP appointment that is freed up in this way will help keep our waiting times down. If in doubt, please email [email protected] or complete a Patchs request and we will advise you or book a GP appointment if one is needed.
• Please do not use email or Patchs for urgent medical issues. They are not checked at all times, so if you require urgent medical assistance, please do call. If you kindly follow these steps it will be easier to get through on the phone.
• Use our excellent physiotherapy assessment service which can be booked via reception for all joint pains. They are highly qualified to diagnose and manage all musculo-skeletal problems and will refer onwards as needed for ongoing physiotherapy, orthopaedics, blood tests, X-rays or even injections or MRI scans, which GPs can’t offer. You can often see a physiotherapist faster than getting a GP appointment and we think they do a better job at assessing these problems.
• Have you seen your local pharmacist? We are lucky to be supported by excellent local pharmacists who have also done many years of training. Please consider discussing minor ailments with them before booking an urgent GP appointment. They will direct you to us if they consider it necessary.  Here are two helpful links: 1)How your pharmacy can help. 2) What conditions can my community pharmacist can help me with.
• Keep us working & don’t infect others.  We have continued to have many staff go off sick with Covid or other illnesses. This obviously has a huge effect on the efficient running of the practice. We ask that you continue to wear masks if you are unwell with any viral illness and still consider using Covid home tests so we can at least know if you are positive before we see you.
• Be patient and courteous with us. We are all working as fast as we can whilst offering a safe and high quality service. Anyone can run late if there are complicated or sick patients. Staff might seem to be taking a long time to answer your calls but the pressure on them is enormous. We are all doing our best. Please understand and don’t take out your frustrations about any delays on our staff.
• Please be flexible with telephone times. It’s really hard to give an exact time we will call, but we will always ring you if booked. If you do have a specific time slot that the call needs to be in, or a time to avoid, please write in the appointment information (if booking online) or tell the receptionist if phoning. We will do our best to accommodate.
• Please come in for urgent / new problems. Though we had to manage with phone calls during the pandemic, previously we would never have had had phone call consultations about coughs, sore throats, rashes or tummy pain. If as a result of the call we then need to examine you, it just makes the whole process longer for everyone in addition to taking up another GP appointment.
  Phone calls are better suited to routine reviews.
• Please don’t ignore text messages asking you to book an appointment or for some information. We are regularly running searches and doing checks when issuing prescriptions or looking at results. We are very proud of the safe and high quality service we offer. We don’t enjoy sending out lots of text reminders, but we send them to improve your health and keep you well. It is time consuming when they get ignored. Should you want less texts then please book as requested or email us or book a review if you don’t think the request is necessary. The government has given us very many targets which are increasingly hard to attain if you don’t answer our texts. These targets are there for a purpose, to keep you well! The more targets we hit, the better you are being cared for and we secure more funding to continue to offer more staff and more appointments. Please help us to help you!
• As regards targets – in particular please book your smears, flu jabs or childhood immunisations. These are targets that we struggle to meet.  We have a fridge full of flu jabs that are not in patient’s arms as so many have had elsewhere. It’s not too late if you have changed your mind.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and for helping us to continue to provide an efficient and high quality service for everyone’s benefit.

Team Willow.

PS: We hope you have found this helpful – please feel free to let us know if you have any helpful changes or additions. If you did find it helpful, we do love getting a nice Google review.