Dear Patient,
As we are sure you are aware, the NHS is currently under extraordinary pressure, and this includes General Practice. As many other local GP surgeries have recently alluded to; the demand from patients always outweighs our appointment capacity. Without further Government investment in Primary Care, we will not be able to continue to offer the level of service we would like to. However, to try and allow us to offer our patients the best service possible we have been looking at different ways of working and what we can do as a Practice to stay efficient and available to those that need us the most:
- Firstly, over the next few months we are going to introduce a new online consultation tool, this new tool will replace eConsult and hopefully be easier for our patients and staff to use. Due to this IT change, it will mean for a short period of time patients will not be able to book routine GP appointments, the Practice will only be able to help with urgent requests. All GP appointment requests will be triaged by a clinician and if deemed as routine the patient will be asked to recontact the Practice once our IT system change has been completed. You can continue to book nursing team appointments as normal.
- We will request some of our patients are seen by the new Pharmacy First Scheme, where at a local pharmacy patients can be assessed and provided with antibiotics or treatment if needed, for the following ailments: non complicated urine infections, shingles, impetigo, acute sore throat, acute sinusitis, acute earache and infected insect bites and stings.
- We hope to introduce more capacity for patients to be seen on the day for urgent requests, however this may mean there will be less availability for routine appointments and therefore the wait to be seen by your usual GP may be longer.
- We have invested in more GPs, nurses, and staff to help with our increasing list size and patient demand. We also have a new role starting at the Practice in April- an Occupational Therapist.
- We are working on improving some of our internal administration processes to make them as easy and efficient as possible; our aim is to free up time for our clinicians and ensure they are not tied up unnecessarily.
The whole team at Rosebank Health are working extremely hard to provide the best level of care they can, we cannot work any harder! We have an amazing team and thank them all for continuing to work tirelessly to support our patients.
If you feel strongly about the issues the NHS and Primary Care are currently facing, you may wish to write to your local MP.
We are grateful for your support and understanding.
The Partners
Rosebank Health