We have a few exciting updates at the Practice. We recently welcomed Dr Ruth Oldroyd as our Senior Partner following the retirement of Dr Beresford after 27 years as a GP. Dr Oldroyd is not far behind having joined us here in 2001 and is about to celebrate her 23rd year here at the Practice. Joining the team most recently we are pleased to introduce our new GP Partner Dr Nan Thornley who became a Partner in October 23. Dr Thornley is a most welcome addition and takes our complement of Clinical Partners to 7 and a total of 10 GPs at the practice.
We are very pleased to have such a well-doctored practice with long-serving GP Partners and a consistent team of GP’s. Continuity of care is important to us and is an area that we know is important to our patents. We plan to continue to focus on this in 2024 which is one of the reasons that we have made the decision to implement a new appointment booking system for our patients from April 2024.
Firstly, we are aware that we experience heavy demand on our telephone lines at peak times and that appointments can be difficult to arrange. Despite increasing our telephone line capacity and recruiting more doctors and receptionists’ we know that access to appointments has remained difficult with unacceptable wait times for patients on our telephones.
In late 2022 we invited our patients to complete a questionnaire where we asked for your thoughts on how easy it was to get through to the practice and book an appointment. This feedback was vital in helping us formulate the best way to address the issues that you were experiencing.
We have now completed our review of our appointment booking system and have listened to feedback from our patients and our Patient Participation Group. After careful thought we have made the decision to move to an online system.
This means that from 8th April 2024 patients will be asked to submit a simple online form to contact the practice rather than telephoning or coming into reception to book. The form is clearly displayed and available on the website www.wemandpreeshealth.co.uk. It can be accessed via a smart phone, computer, or tablet. Once received our clinical and admin teams will review the forms the same day, and patients will then be contacted with the appropriate appointment or advice.
For those that do not have access to a smartphone, or computer, or are unable to use the online form you will still be able to telephone the practice. A receptionist will be able to submit the form on your behalf by completing it with you over the telephone.
We hope that those that are comfortable completing the form online will support this new process by doing so as this will reduce the number of calls coming through to the practice, reducing pressure on the
telephone lines and improving the service for those that are unable to use the online method.
Finally, we would like to assure our patients that we are fully committed to providing excellent access toappointments for all our patients and are looking forward to incorporating new technology that we believe will improve our patients’ experience of contacting the practice.
