Newquay health centre telephone triage system

Any patient requesting an appointment will speak to a clinician (GP or Nurse Practitioner) over the telephone.

The clinician will then talk to the patient about their symptoms and concerns, and then agree with the patient how best to treat them by either giving telephone advice or arranging a face to face appointment. The clinician will aim to offer the face to face appointment at a time convenient to the patient, taking into consideration the urgency of the problem.
What was wrong with the old appointment system?

A few years ago, patients were able to call the surgery in the morning and if they called before 9.30am they were able to get an appointment to see a GP. As the months went on, the time that we were telling patients we were full was earlier and earlier, in many cases GP appointments were full within 5 or 10 minutes of the phone lines going over at 8.30am.

We were concerned that many patients weren’t able to access our services.

The population of Newquay is increasing with many new housing developments being built and we found that our previous appointment system was not able to cope with the increased demand for appointments.

Newquay Health Centre is not the only surgery that is finding that the demand for appointments is increasing. Around the country, a large number of GP surgeries have decided to change to a telephone consultation system as a way of coping with this demand.

By triaging same-day appointment requests, the clinicians can ensure patients who need to be seen will be given appointments when demand is high.

Telephone consultations can reduce the number of patients that actually need to come in to the surgery.

We did a number of trial weeks of telephone consultations and found that less than half the patients that contacted the surgery actually needed to come in for a traditional face to face appointment. Many problems can be treated with telephone advice alone and a large number of patients request appointments for repeat medications, sick notes, results etc, this can all safely be dealt with over the telephone.

This new system means that more patients per day can access their GP.

Yes there are! Many follow up appointments via the telephone allow the patient to “touch base” with their GP without having to make the trip in to the surgery.

Nationwide, there is a general move towards “on the go” access to your GP. Many of us lead busy lives and this system means patients can be contacted via their mobile phone wherever they are and they don’t need to take time off work to get to appointments.

It means patients who would have had to spend money on taxi fares or take a bus from outside of town may not need to do this now, and there are less cars in the car park.

We understand that more telephone calls will put more pressure on the phone lines so each GP uses a mobile phone to call their patients, therefore not blocking the lines for patients who are calling in.

We have 8 lines coming in to the surgery, manned from 8.30am. It is busy, we can’t avoid this, but as a patient you can help in a number of ways;

Only call first thing if you need a same-day appointment. We have pre-bookable GP telephone appointments up to 4 weeks ahead and all our nurse appointments are pre-bookable, you can call later in the day for these.

Monday is 3 times as busy as any other day of the week, so avoid Mondays if you can!

Please don’t try to request repeat prescriptions over the phone. We do not accept requests this way; it blocks the phone lines and causes mistakes.

Our clinicians will try their best to make their calls in blocks; either between 9am and 11 am or in the afternoon between 3pm and 4pm so you can choose which is best for you.

If your job means you can’t take calls at these times, as is the case with some patients such as teachers, please let us know and we will do our best to book for a GP to call you at a time that is convenient.

I feel like I am never going to see my Doctor!

Rest assured we are not trying to put a barrier up between you and your GP, the doctors are still offering face to face appointments whenever they are required.

We hope to give our patients a better service by increasing our capacity but ensuring those that need to be seen will get an appointment when they need to.

Any practice that changes its appointment system will have teething problems, and we can assure you changes have been made, and are being made.