Digital Triage-First

We recently wrote to all of our patients to let you know that we are working towards a Modern General Practice Access model. Please find a copy of the letter here. 

Please find more information on the NHS England Modern General Practice Access model here.

Support for Patients

Parents & Carers

If you are a parent to a child UNDER the age of 13, or a registered carer (with appropriate consent on the clinical record), you can submit a Patchs requests on behalf of those you care for.

If you are registered at the same practice

• Once you are registered and logged into Patchs, click on the Make a new request link at the top of the page. This will load the How can we help you? page, where you need to click the Someone I care for button.
• You will now be taken to the Choose Dependent page. Here, choose a dependent from a list (if they have already been set up). If they have not been set up, you can add someone new by clicking on the Add someone I care for link.
• Clicking the Add someone I care for link takes you to the Add Dependents page - Here, you will be able to enter the details of the person you are caring for. You will need to confirm that this person is registered at this GP practice, and that you are authorised to act in the capacity of parent or carer for this person. Do this by checking the boxes at the bottom of the page. When you have finished, click the Add button.
• Now select the dependent from the Choose Dependent page and make your request to Patchs.
  

If you are NOT registered at the same practice

When creating a Patchs account for the patient you care for, instead of selecting the ‘Create an account as a patient’ option, you would select the ‘Create an account as a carer only’.

Drop-In Sessions

We are holding drop-in sessions at at the practice to help assist patients who require support to register for Patchs, and who would like to be shown how it works on the following dates: 

Thursday 26^th June 2025 – 10am – 12pm

Thursday 10^th July 2025 – 4pm – 6pm

Tuesday 22^nd July 2025 – 10am – 12pm

NHS App 

Find out how to register for the NHS App here.

Register for the NHS App so you can:

• View test results
• Order repeat prescriptions
• Book and cancel appointments
• See your health record
• Access a symptom checker for health assessment
• Get health advice

Data Collection

Telephony

We’ve used our cloud-based telephony system to collect data from our system. This shows us:

• During a period of 3 months, on average the practice received a total of 5,023 telephone calls per month.

• During a period of 3 months, on average the practice received 3,083 telephone calls between 08:00am – 09:00am per month. That equates to 61.38% of our total phone activity occurring within the first hour of the day.

• During a period of 3 months, the average queue time was 184 seconds.  

Demand and Capacity Data

We chose a random week at the end of March to monitor our total demand and capacity data. This shows us:

• Over the course of the week, the practice delivered 297 clinical appointments from our site. 

• Out of the 297 clinical appointments, 186 of these were booked on the day of the appointment and 111 of these were pre-booked ahead of time.

• Out of the 297 clinical appointments, 41 of them were digital consultations.

• Over the course of the week, 134 patients could not be accommodated for.

• Over the course of the week, 11 patients failed to attend or cancel their scheduled appointment. 

As we implement changes, we will repeat this audit regularly to measure outcomes and the impact of the changes we put into place.

Appropriate Appointments

Over a period of 1 week, we asked our clinicians audited the appropriate use of our appointments. During this period 226 appointments were audited. The findings were:

• 11 of clinician appointments were classified as potentially inappropriate and we found that 199 appointments booked with a GP could have been seen by an alternative appropriate healthcare clinician, such as an Advanced Nurse Practitioner, Practice Nurse or Community Pharmacist.

•  Our clinicians fed back that 66 of the face-to-face appointments could have been managed by telephone or digitally.

•  12 patients seen were identified as requiring continuity of care from the clinician that they saw.

Non-Visible Workload 

Not all our clinical work can be measured in appointments. Many clinical interventions take place behind the scenes. We chose to measure some of our additional key clinical activities, our data shows us: 

• Over a random 2 week period, clinicians signed 1,454 prescriptions, averaging 145.4 per day. 

• Over a random 2 week period, clinicians actioned 827 test results, averaging 82.7 per day.

• Over a random 2 week period, clinicians actioned 258 external letters out of a total of 710. On average, this could equate to a total of 6,708 letters requiring clinical action out of a potential 18,460 external letters over a 12 month period.

• Over a random 2 week period, clinicians actioned 153 referrals for further care, making sure that all relevant referral information and test results were included in the referral details.

• Between January - May this year, a total of 79 housebound patients were triaged by phone and required a home visit by an appropriate healthcare professional.