King Cross Practice

Thank you for taking the time to leave feedback for the Practice. We apologise that you have not received the high standard of care which we aim to achieve.

As the response is anonymous we are unable to respond to your enquiry directly.

The Practice accepts requests for appointments/enquiries Monday to Friday, and these requests for appointments can be made over the phone, in person at the reception desk or online via PATCHs. We also have a number of appointments available to book online via SystmOnline (username and password required from the Practice).

Our phone message currently advises that we request any patients who are calling for non-urgent enquiries or non-urgent appointments, to call after 11am. We request this as we have a high volume of calls for urgent appointment booking before 11am and in advising non-urgent enquiries to be made later in the day this helps free up our phone lines for those who require urgent appointments, and to help manage demand of calls. Previously we have had lots of patient calling for non-urgent enquiries early in the morning, which blocked phone lines, leading to longer wait times. However we will not refuse to speak to a patient if they call before/after this time, as we understand that it may be the only time in which patients can contact us.

Our call queues can be very busy, and while we are increasing our Service Advisor team, training new members means that calls may take slightly longer than usual, leading to some queues. We are working on adapting our phone system to decrease queues, including the introduction of a direct line to our Secretarial team for patients to discuss private work and referral queries.

We detail the different ways in which patients can contact us on our website and advertise the types of appointment and booking process.

Additionally we are working on increasing the number of PATCHs requests which can be submitted. We have raised difficulties with PATCHs system to our commissioners and are looking at resolutions to help improve patient access.

Please contact the Practice directly if you would like further assistance/information.

Thank you for leaving feedback for the Practice.

We appreciate that it can be difficult to contact the Practice and over the last 12 months have worked hard to make improvements to our phone lines, including introducing a call-back system on the phones. Despite these improvements we do see a significant number of patients contacting us during busy periods at the Practice and are continuing to look to improve our call wait times.

We do also offer alternative routes of contact, including PATCHs messaging available on our website, or patients can visit the Practice reception desk for help with enquiries.

Currently we do offer all patients who contact for an urgent/routine consultation signposting to appropriate services (such as pharmacies/opticians/physio/mental health support/podiatrists) or book telephone consultations for them, this enables our GPs to take thorough history and the GP will then bring patients in for face to face consultation if deemed clinically appropriate. We do however offer some direct face to face appointments for foot issues, musculoskeletal/physio related issues, for mental health support, babies 6 week checks, joint injections, and a large range of nurse related appointments. These appointments are booked with a range of clinicians.

It is very difficult to get the balance between face to face booking and telephone right. With the current model we are running many patients appreciate the benefit of being able to have a telephone consultation on the day and have their issue resolved without needing to visit the Practice, while those who need to be seen are brought into Practice. We have seen a significant reduction in the number of appointments which are not attended by patients (DNAs) which in return means we have more appointments available for our patient population.

However we are constantly trying to improve our processes and are currently reviewing our booking processes to enable more appointment to be booked face to face directly, if clinically required.

We advise patients that they are able to request ongoing consultation with a particular GP if they wish, however if they may need to wait for the next routine appointment with said GP. If the complaint is of an urgent nature we will offer an appointment with next available clinician, which may include Physicians Associates, Advanced Practitioners or GPs. We have had a period of GP sickness/maternity over the last two months, which may have meant that usual GPs were not available, however we now have most GPs available for booking.

Once again, thank you for feeding back to the Practice and I hope the information above provides some clarity regarding the situation.

Thank you for this positive feedback on your experience of the service. The Practice strives to provide high quality healthcare to all patients.

I will share this feedback with our team.

Thank you for your positive feedback of our services at King Cross Surgery.