Appointment Access and Telephone Lines

Following recent patient feedback, we have noticed an increase in responses regarding our telephone lines and appointment access.

           A number of patients think that the only way to get an appointment at the surgery is to ring up at 8am to get on the morning triage, this is correct for urgent same day appointments. This phone line service is open between 8 and 10:30am however this may be closed earlier if we reach capacity of our allocated calls. Please note the number of calls varies each day due to the number of clinicians working.

 Once the list has been closed the admin staff are able to offer a variety of Hub appointments in the local area that offer out of hours appointments, alternatively there is also the 111-telephone service. Please note if you make a same day appointment you will not be able to select a specific clinician, therefor we do recommend for any ongoing issues that you book a non-urgent pre bookable appointment if you wish to see the same clinician. If you do not need a same day or urgent appointment, please try to call after 10.30 if at all possible.

We do also offer pre-bookable appointments at both the Manor Top and Dovercourt sites these can be booked for a various number of clinicians including Doctors, Nurses, Physician Associates and also clinicians like the in-house physio and midwife. When calling for a pre-bookable appointment please call the practice after 10:30am when the morning triage list has closed. Please understand that we have limited capacity and do not have unlimited appointments. We do provide a much larger number of appointments than many Practices and are currently 3rd out of 74 Practices in the city for GP appointments per 1000 people on our list.

We have 14 incoming telephone lines, and our staff do their best to answer calls promptly, but these lines can all be ringing so please be patient- we are doing our best.

Published on 4 April 2024