Advice and Appointments

How to see a doctor

• The surgery is open Monday - Friday 8.00am - 6.30pm
• Consultations are 8.30am - 6.00pm
• Consultations are by appointment only
• You can also book telephone consultations with a doctor.
• Our receptions staff are there to help you access the appropriate service. You may be asked by the receptionist to give a brief description of your problem before you can speak to the doctor.
• Patients with more urgent problems can be seen on the day and patients are encouraged to call as soon after 8.00am as possible for an appointment or speak to the Duty Doctor. Genuine emergencies are seen urgently.

To make an appointment to see the doctor,

Please telephone: Welling Surgery - 0844 4770970, Holly House Surgery - 0844 4770975, or:

Make an appointment using our online services (please note that this system is not suitable for same day or urgent appointments).

Really Urgent Problems

Really urgent problems will always be seen or dealt with urgently, which sometimes means advising patients to attend A&E (casualty).

We usually cannot, for example diagnose or rule out fractures without the benefit of X-rays and the treatment of severe chest pain is better managed in hospital.

Book on the day Appointments

There will be a few appointments each day, which are released at 8am that morning by the reception staff.

Duty Doctor
At each surgery there is a Duty Doctor who is available at certain times of the day for advice. When you ring you will be asked to hold on, or if that is not possible we will return your call providing you give us a nominated land line.

The doctors cannot return calls generally to a mobile number except in very exceptional circumstances. Patients will be asked details of their illness or advice call.

Booking Appointments
Both surgeries allows patients to pre-book routine appointments up to 2 WEEKS in advance with all doctors within the practice to allow greater accessibility to your chosen doctor, however for emergency and urgent appointments you may have to see the doctor on duty that day, or in the OPEN SURGERY.
 

Locums and Salaried Doctors

The practice employs locums and salaried doctors.  All locum and salaried doctors are fully qualified and experienced GPs, and for urgent and book on the day problems, there may be no choice but to see these GPs. Our Salaried GPs are available to be pre-booked up to 2 weeks in advance.

Holiday Times

When one of the partners is on holiday, it is impossible to provide our  normal service. The remaining partners will be personally responsible for providing emergency cover for 64 hours per week and dealing with the vast majority of prescriptions, paperwork and problems – work which the locums do not do.  When a partner is away, we therefore focus on the more urgent work and continue to try to provide as many appointments as are needed.  Afternoon and routine appointments then depend on the workload of the day and will often be in very short supply or unobtainable.

Home Visits

These take much longer than seeing patients in the surgery. If you feel too ill to wait in the waiting room or think you have a contagious disease, please ask to wait in a side room. Our reception staff will look after you and will try to get you seen as quickly as possible.

If a home visit is the only available option, please try to request it before 10am.

Non-Attenders

We lose the equivalent of two full doctors sessions per week because of patients not keeping their appointments, without letting the practice know.

This has resulted in a considerable amount of unused and lost appointments which could have been used for other patients, had we been informed in good time.

We would remind our patients that if you are unable to attend for your booked appointment, you should ring the surgery in good time, and cancel the appointment with our reception staff.

If you are unable to get through on the normal telephone line, then when the surgery is closed, an option on the telephone system enables you to leave your details on an answer phone in respect of cancelling your appointment. This message is then collected in the morning by the reception staff and the appointment is then available for another patient.

Alternatively you could cancel your appointment online

The Practice has a policy for non-attendance of appointments which can result in patients being removed from our list.