Face to Face Appointments
Posted on April 20th, 2022
There has been a lot of recent negativity about us being “closed” or not seeing patients Face to Face. We would like to remind patients that although for patients and staff safety and to keep the practice open, we have had to do some things differently, we have however never been closed.
Data taken from the NHS Digital GP Appointments Dashboard shows that in the last 8 weeks (7th February 2022 – 3rd April 2022) we had 8,638 appointments, 59% of which were face to face.
We are currently looking at ways to increase the number of face-to-face appointments while ensuring that vulnerable patients still feel safe when attending appointments. Any decisions are made in our patients’ best interests. The current appointment system was never made to make it difficult to book an appointment, quite the opposite.
Demand is currently extremely high, and we appreciate it can sometimes be frustrating if we can’t always offer an appointment when required but please be assured our staff are working harder than ever to try and meet our patients needs.
If patients would like to engage with the practice and openly discuss improvements, they feel can be made please feel free to join The Patient Forum. The criteria for becoming a Forum member is that you are a registered patient at Sothall Medical Centre. If you are interested in joining this active, friendly group please visit our website and complete a simple application form https://sothall.net