Important Patient Notice Posted or Updated on 3 Oct 2023

Patient Notice – January 2023

At St Luke’s Primary Care Centre, we have had an increase in patients attending the surgery to book urgent same day appointments at the reception desk. This presents a number of issues for our Care Navigators, Clinicians and patients as described below: -

1. Our Care Navigators are unable to ask confidential questions over the reception desk that would help direct patient appropriately, in turn patients may experience difficulty in discussing confidential and sensitive information in a public forum
2. The booking of same day urgent appointments via the reception desk can put some of our frailer and more remote patients at a deficit for accessing urgent appointments
3. Patients attending the surgery who may not have a booked appointment eg: collecting prescription or paperwork are faced with a long queue of patients, which increases their frustration.  This dissatisfaction has led to an increase in abuse that staff are facing on a daily basis.  Consequently, the practice has lost staff and have struggled to recruit.  This impacts on the wellbeing of the rest of the team and the service we can provide to the patients
4. Despite having a self- check in screen and having staff on hand to assist with their enquiries, some patients chose to or are unable to check-in and therefore have to wait for a Care Navigator to become available
5. Significant increase in patients missing their appointment time slot because they were queuing to be checked in by our Care Navigators
6. Clinicians may run late or not have the capacity to see the patient at their allocated time slot.  This increases frustration all round
7. We have implemented two queuing systems – one for appointment enquires and one for other matter, however, patients did not adhere to the system

The closure of face-to-face appointment booking at the front desk allows us to: -

1. increase the number of Care Navigators answering the phone as it requires only 1 Care Navigator on the front desk to deal with general enquiries, therefore releases others to cover tasks etc 
2. get through telephone call enquiries for efficiently.  Previously we could have had up to 3 Care Navigators covering the front desk due to the sheer volume of patients queuing to book urgent same day appointments
3. improve and maintain staff morale and retention because staff are exposed to less verbal abuse
4. have a unified approach to booking appointments giving patients a fair share of availability
5. maintain infection control/staff and patient safety as we have reduced unnecessary visits to the practice that ordinarily can be dealt with in another way
6. dispel the perception that if you visit the surgery, you will automatically be seen.  This is not the case, as everyone must be triaged in the same way.  If you do not have a pre-booked appointment and you arrive at the practice, you will be asked to phone in so that the GP can triage your request and signpost you to the correct clinician/service
7. dispel the perception that those who shout loudest when in front of somebody tend to get what they want

Patients who come to the reception desk will not be given a same day appointment

We appreciate this is a big change for patients but is entirely necessary to preserve services in general.  Therefore, we would ask that you contact the surgery via the phone to request a same day appointment to allow fair access for all our patient population. 

Thank you for helping us ensure that the surgery provides equitable access for all

Other services available to support patients:

• https://www.nhs.uk/
• NHS111 online or via phone
• Local pharmacies
• Livi (24/7 access to a Clinician via an app from the app store / google play)
• Local health directory https://www.icnorthamptonshire.org.uk/care