Patient Notice Regarding Appointments

At Annat Bank we are regularly asked when we are going back to normal appointments:

Annat Bank Practice ran a ‘drop-in’ open surgery every weekday morning. Demand was high, with more than 9,600 open surgery appointments in 2019.

The average wait time for an open surgery appointment was more than 56 minutes (up from 34 minutes in 2016).

In order to cope with the demand, we were considering changing to remote/telephone consultations, which reduces the waiting time and also reduces the number of patients who do not attend, and we were able to offer more appointments to deal with emergency issues on the day.

In 2019 – we looked at the number of patients who did not attend appointments and almost 14 weeks’ worth of consultation time was lost to missed appointments across all three practices within the Links Health Centre in 2019.

Annat Bank’s normal appointments procedure 2023 and beyond

Every patient contacting the practice first provides some brief information on the reasons for contacting the practice and is care navigated and prioritised before making an appointment.

Annat Bank reception staff are highly trained in offering the correct appointment for the condition you have. Therefore, the more information you can give them regarding your condition will help them assess which clinician is best suited to your needs, this may be a physio, a nurse or someone other than a GP.

When allocated an appointment the doctor will phone the patient back, if the patient is more suitable for an in-person appointment, then the GP will arrange that with the patient at a time that is convenient for both.

Reception staff can’t arrange a face-to-face appointment, this will only be done by the doctors. If you miss the call the doctor will leave a message for you.

This cuts down on patients not attending and makes more appointments available for patients.

If you are offered an emergency appointment on the day, you may be asked to attend the practice at short notice, if you are unlikely to be able to attend, please book the next available appointment. The duty doctor may not be your preferred GP. All our GPs work through the emergency/urgent appointments on that day.