IMPORTANT PATIENT INFORMATION
Updated: 05.02.2024
We would like to remind patients that they can access our services by:
- using our on-line consultation service eConsult.
- by telephoning reception.
- by coming into the surgery.
Your request will be triaged by one of our clinical team and you will be contacted with advice, advice and treatment, a telephone or face to face appointment based on your clinical need.
Patients can also access STOP THINK CHOOSE via the link below, or NHS111 as other providers may be able to see you sooner, depending on the problem you are presenting with.
https://www.kentandmedway.icb.nhs.uk/your-health/local-services
Local pharmacies are also a good resources for minor aliments too.
If your condition is more urgent then please contact NHS111 for medical advice and they will direct you to the most appropriate care provider.
Please DO NOT attend Accident and Emergency unless you have a medical emergency or are advised to do so.
BetterCare Support
Kent County Council has launched BetterCare Support - an online self-assessment tool, to enable people to live independently and safely within their communities and home. By answering questions about their social care needs, the tool provides people with information, advice, and guidance about the options and services available to them.
You can find other online resources below. Please share these resources with your patients.
Changes in processing of prescriptions by local pharmacies:
We have been made aware that Boot and Paydens Pharmacies are now processing some prescriptions centrally, not at local chemists shops. This may increase the time it takes for you to order and collect your repeat medication by up to another two days. Please check with you local pharmacy and remember to add on this additional time to allow for both the practice and pharmacy to process your prescription items.
Please remember to allow your practice at least two working days to process your prescription and send this to the pharmacy.
Access to appointments and Safe Working Guidance:
As you will be aware from the media, general practice is working under extremely difficult circumstances, with fewer GPs than ever before per 1000 of population. Your practice is no different, with currently 2,166 patients per whole time equivalent GP.
Due to our increasing list size, the need to protect our clinical team and to ensure that we offer a safe service to our registered population, has never been more important. In order to do this we have implemented the following suite of measures.
BMA Safe Working Guidance:
The BMA Safe Working guidelines have been designed to protect the clinicians we have from burning out and to ensure patients being seen are offered a safe service. These guidelines incorporate At Your Service, a paper written by the Policy Exchange, which states that the safe working level for GPs is no more than 28 encounters per day (14 per half day). These encounters include; telephone, online and face to face encounters. The guidance takes into account the administration required to support these encounters such as; dictating referrals, dealing with hospital letters regarding previous referrals, signing repeat prescriptions, reading and acting on pathology and radiology results, messages from patients and completing medical reports etc. for patients. eConsults received from patient also need to be triaged and signposted, which further adds to the number of patient contacts per day.
Following implementation of the Safe Working guidance, once a clinician reaches 14 encounters per half day session they will have no more patient contacts added to their workflow for that session.
eConsult and Same Day requests:
eConsult is available for patients from 08:00 – 16:00 Monday to Thursday and Friday 08:00 – 12:00. This is to enable us to triage these within 24 hours of being received by the practice.
eConsult is the preferred method for you to contact the practice, as this helps to free up our phone lines for those patients who are unable to access eConsult, and provides our reception team with the time they need to focus on contacting you via text or telephone with an appointment or signposting advice following clinical triage of your medical problem.
All patients contacting the practice are asked to give us a brief description of their problem so that they can be given advice, offered treatment, a planned appointment or sign-posted to the most appropriate service to meet their needs. This may include a local pharmacy service, Deal HUB, or advise to call NHS111 to access a Urgent Treatment Centre (UTC) or Accident and Emergency (A&E) department.
We are not an emergency service and can only continue to provide safe care to our patients within the capacity we have available.
Managing our patient list:
To enable us to continue to provide a safe service to our registered patients, we have had to regretfully limit the number of new patients we are able to register each month.
We have agreed with NHS Kent and Medway ICB (the local health care authority) that, for the foreseeable future, we will limit registration of new patients to 25 per month.
Other practices in the Deal locality may be able to register you and they are listed below for your information:
- Balmoral Surgery - Canada Road, Walmer, Deal, Kent, CT14 7EQ. Tel: 01304 373444
- Manor Road Surgery – 38 Manor Rd, Deal CT14 9BX. Tel. 01304 367495
- The Cedars Surgery – 24 Marine Rd, Walmer, Deal CT14 7DN. Tel: 01304 373341
If you have tried all the practices on the list and are still unable to register, then please either email NHS Kent and Medway at kmicb.gpcontracting@nhs.net or ring on 01634 335095 Option 6 for assistance in registering with a practice.
Alternatively, you may seek to register with us at another time.
Please note that we are unable to hold a waiting list.
eConsult Access:
“Due to intense pressure and significant demand for appointments, we may take longer than normal to respond to your queries, and we recognise many patients are waiting far longer than we would like. With this in mind, we ask that you continue to do everything you can to consider all the avenues to seek help stop, think and choose. In addition, to enable our practice to manage urgent demand and to allow a recovery period, we may at times need to pause access to e-Consult”
- Monday to Friday 07:00 hrs to 12:00 hrs - OPEN
- Saturday, Sunday and Bank holidays - CLOSED
Appointments in Kent and Medway:
From April 2022 to March 2023 the 182 General Practices across Kent & Medway provided 10.5 million appointments an increase of 6% from the previous year. This is for a population 1.9 million, which equates to every person having the equivalent of 5.5 appointments a year, an astonishing achievement. All this work in the context of the lowest numbers of GP’s per 1000 population compared to any other area in England.
Appointment data is published by KMICB on their webiste, so take a look:
SOCIAL PRESCRIBING INFORMATION FOR DEAL AND SANDWICH PATIENTS
https://www.facebook.com/Deal-Sandwich-PCN-Social-Prescribing-108273851137397/
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