Appointments

If you are not able to use eConsult, or you try to use it and the software informs you that your problem is too serious to wait, please call us, and the Reception Team will support you. They will ask you some additional questions to ensure we have all the right information for the GP to be able to assess your need. Some of these questions may be quite sensitive. Please be assured that our Reception Team, although not medically trained, are trained to take this information, and bound by strict confidentiality in the same way our clinical team are. Be aware this pathway can take anything from 5 minutes to 15, so please do use eConsult independently where possible to ensure the queues on the phones are kept as short as possible.

eConsult is also available for administration queries, such as test results, fit notes and requests for private work.

eConsult is available for parents of children aged 6 months to 17 years for many medical problems, young people aged 16 and 17 are also able to complete it independently. If your child is under 6 months, or their medical problem is not one of the listed pathways, please call us instead.

After submitting the eConsult, we will contact you by the time frame you are given (usually by the end of the next working day). If the outcome is that you need to see or speak to a GP or ANP, this will have been assessed as urgent or non-urgent.

If your need is assessed as urgent, you will generally be booked today or the next working day, and we will call or message you with an appointment.

If your need has been assessed as routine, we will ask you to call us to make the appointment.

For routine ANP (Advanced Nurse Practitioner) appointments, these are usually at the Bursledon Hub, and are booked through us. Appointments are released at various points through the week and you can just call any time and mention we have asked you to book with an ANP subsequent to completing an eConsult.

For routine GP appointments, there is a dedicated telephone option to make a routine GP appointment (telephone or face to face) subsequent to eConsult. Please call us on 01489 785 722 and select option 6. Appointments are released every Wednesday morning at 11am, and every Thursday at 4pm. Appointments will be for 2-4 weeks time. If there is no availability, there are sometimes appointments available other times of the week at the Bursledon Hub. These are not released at a specific time, so we cannot say when to call, but you are welcome to ask us. If there is nothing available, you will be asked to call us back the following week.

If we offer you a remote (telephone) appointment, and you wish to be seen face to face, we will do our best to accommodate this where we can do so safely – please speak to reception.

Essentially, we have had to change the way we offer non-urgent appointments because demand is exceeding supply.

We use eConsult to ensure that we are prioritising medical need. Every eConsult submission is assessed by a clinician for urgency and signposted to the most appropriate outcome. This helps us to best use all the options that are available for patients including (click the links to find out more):

• Self help
• Community Pharmacy Consultation Service (CPCS)
• Social Prescriber
• Health and Wellbeing Coach
• Musculoskeletal Practitioner (MSK)
• Mental Health Practitioner (MHP)
• Young Persons Counsellor
• Clinical Pharmacist
• Advanced Nurse Practitioner
• GP

By prioritising need, we are ensuring that we can safely ask non-urgent requests to wait until we have capacity. We realise this will be frustrating for patients as they may need to keep trying us from one week to the next, but we have no option on this. Demand for appointments has risen significantly since before the pandemic.

Even accounting for the registered list size increases, we are still seeing 20% more requests for appointments. This increase is also reflected nationally.

Blood tests are not part of the core work that the practice provides, rather we are commissioned (asked to provide) them as an additional service for which we are paid separately. The funding offered for each blood test currently means that for each test we do, we make a small monetary loss. This obviously then has an impact on the other services which we can provide.

We have chosen to drastically limit the amount of blood tests we offer to minimise this impact, so will not be able to book most patients for a blood test here.

There are appointments available every day, usually same day, at Southampton General Hospital, Lymington Hospital, and Romsey Hospital. You can book online (https://patientbooking.uhs.nhs.uk/) or call them (023 8120 4877) to make an appointment.

For more information about these services click here.

We know that a small number of our patients are frail or have a disability which means they cannot get the Southampton Hospital, so we have chosen to provide a small amount of appointments for this group.

If you are over 80 or have a physical disability which means you cannot get to the hospital, you are welcome to call us to see if we have any availability. Appointments are released every day at 8.30am and there are generally around 14 appointments released a week ahead each day. If you do not meet this criteria, you will need to book with Southampton Hospital.

ESP Hub at Lowford at currently looking into whether they can provide additional capacity – they currently have a small amount of appointments which are shared between the local practices, but in order to support all of our patients, they are working out whether it is feasible to provide some additional capacity.

We work with our team and also our Patient Participation Group (PPG) to give the best support to our patients that we can within the funding that we receive. If you have any constructive feedback about improvements we could consider to the appointment system, we are happy to hear your suggestions. 

We would really appreciate it if you would not take out any frustrations on our Reception team. Whilst we understand this system will not suit everyone, it is the best we can do with the resources we currently have – rather please use the feedback facility.