Extended Opening - from August 2008

The government has asked us to provide a limited  number of pre-booked appointments at weekends and evenings.  We have agreed with Dorset PCT to offer these appointments on some Monday evenings, Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings, with one member of staff available to open the door. These appointments are intended for those who find it difficult to make appointments during normal opening hours. The Health Centre will not be open for any enquiries, urgent appointments, for making appointments or prescription requests, nor will the telephone be switched on. If you have a pre-booked appointment you will need to ring the bell at the door and you will be let in.

The current arrangements for out-of-hours care still apply outside of normal opening hours (ie any time outside of Mon to Friday 0800 to 1830). Please click  here for more information about contacting the Dorset Urgent Care Service or NHS Direct.

Personal Lists - why do we have these?

We run a personal list system, so that you are registered with an individual GP. If your GP is present and has available appointments, we would normally request that you see your own doctor. The advantages of a personal list system, as we see it, are:

• Continuity of care; seeing a doctor who knows about you and your previous medical history
• Having a named doctor to co-ordinate your care, and take overall responsibility for it; this is particularly important when test results and correspondence from hospitals are involved

We do however have a flexible system, especially if your problem is of an urgent nature. And if you wish to see a doctor of a specified gender for a personal matter, we will do our best to accomodate this.

If you are unhappy with the care provided by your doctor, you may request to re-register with another GP in the Practice. We cannot guarantee a particular doctor, but will endeavour to find another suitable GP for you. We hope, of course, that you will not find this to be neccessary.

New Telephone System

If you have telephoned us recently you will have noticed some important changes. We have invested in some of the latest telephone technology following input from the Patient Participation Group and comments made by patients in our annual patient survey. You wanted us to improve telephone access to the surgery: the system we have installed has been designed to assist with this.

Firstly we have increased the number of telephone lines giving greater capacity to and from the surgery. When you call us the first thing you will notice is that you are given four choices which will guide you to the relevant departments. You are asked to press the appropriate number on your telephone keypad as follows:

1 Community Services (where you have three further choices listed below).
2 Home Visits (Telephone between 8.30am and 10am if possible)
3 Appointments (8.30am – 6.30pm)
4 All other General Enquiries (8.30am – 6.30pm)

If you do not choose an option you will be put through to general enquiries

Community Services has the following three choices:

1 District Nurses
2 Health Visitors
3 Physiotherapists

In both cases you do not have to listen to the whole message before pressing the appropriate department number.

When ringing Community Services you may be put through to an answering machine as the people who work in this department by the very nature of their work are not always available during the day to take your call in person. They will however return your call as soon as possible if you leave them your contact details. It is therefore important that you do not leave urgent or emergency messages on their answering machines.

By using this system calls are put through to the appropriate department and although you may be held in a queue within that department the telephone queuing will be much shorter than it was with our old system and in each of these queues your call will be answered in the strict order in which you ring us.

We are now using the surgery telephone system to communicate with patients to a high degree. For your safety and security all calls to and from the practice are securely recorded using computerised technology. Access to recordings is password protected and access to any recording is strictly controlled. Full details are available from the practice and on our web site.

We can only employ a finite number of staff to help you both on the telephone and in person at reception. Although the new telephone system should assist us all, can we please ask you to help us further in the following ways? When you ring please think about the time of day, for example mornings at 8.30 are the busiest for appointments, especially Mondays. Therefore if you are seeking routine treatment later in the week or following week calling us later in the day may be more appropriate. At lunch time between 1pm and 2pm we do not have the same number of staff on duty as we do at other times so you may have to wait a little longer to be answered.

Please also be clear and concise when ringing as the longer you take with your phone call the longer it takes us to answer the next patient’s call.

Repeat Prescriptions

A large number of patients who come to the health centre in person are either requesting or collecting repeat prescriptions. Could we take this opportunity to ask you to consider processing your repeat prescriptions through the pharmacy of your choice? In doing so it would help us to free up staff at the reception and enable us to put this very valuable resource on to the telephones.

Advanced Access Appointments

Swanage Medical Practice offers a service called 'Advanced Access'. We would like all requests for an appointment with your doctor in the first instance, to be dealt with as a telephone consultation with your GP, either on the same day or at another day and time agreed with you.

When you call we will ask how we can help you and ask you to give our trained receptionists brief details of your condition so that they can record them for the attention of your doctor. If you feel you are unable to disclose your condition you can of course state your call is 'Personal'.

(For your peace of mind the practice receptionists are covered by the NHS and Practice codes of confidentiality, just the same as all the health care professionals at the health centre.)

The receptionist will take your name and telephone number and the doctor will call you to discuss the problem and agree a course of action. This may be an appointment with your doctor, an appointment with a specialist nurse, direct referral to a hospital specialist or more likely a diagnostic test i.e., blood test, urine test, x-ray, ultrasound etc or self-care advice.

For some conditions it may be more appropriate for our receptionists to arrange an appointment with a practice nurse, nurse specialist, health visitor, district nurse, etc and they will help you choose.

This system has speeded up the process of treating your illness and made face-to-face consultation with your doctor far more productive, if diagnostic tests are completed beforehand. If, however, you consider that a telephone consultation will be of no benefit, you may elect to wait for a routine appointment with the doctor.

Please let us know in advance if you are unable to keep any appointment made, so that we may offer it to someone else. If you are late for your appointment, you may be asked to wait until the end of surgery or be asked to make another appointment.

Out of Hours

If you are unwell in the evening, overnight or at the weekend, contact the Dorset Urgent Care Service as before on  0845 600 10 13.

NHS Direct can also give you general medical information 24 hours a day. Their trained nurses can provide you with expert health advice and reassurance any time of the day or night on 0845 46 47. If your illness or injury is severe, or you have had a serious accident, call 999 and ask for an ambulance.

As always if you have any comments to make about our services, we are happy to receive them in order that we can try and provide you with the service required within the limited resources which we have.