Dear patients,
You may have seen in the newspapers and broadcast media the governments intentions to have practices around the country open for extended hours.
You may not be aware of the problems other patients have accessing their GP, we pride ourselves on our availability and whilst you may not always be able to see the doctor of first choice you will always be given the opportunity to see our 'duty' doctor, or if appropriate speak with a doctor by telephone.
In order to extend our availability we will from June be offering doctor appointment sessions that begin at 8a.m. (08:00) every day of the week, previously other than certain days our first sessions began at 8:30a.m. We hope these earlier appointments will be of benefit to our 'working' patients but they are available to all.
In the evening we will be providing doctor appointment sessions that end with a last appointment at 6:30p.m. (18:30) the practice will close at 7p.m. (19:00) and the dispensary will be open until this time for the collection of prescriptions and medications if we dispense for you. Again we hope these later than normal appointments will be helpful for our 'working' patients, but again these are available to all. We expect that these may well be taken up by some of our frail elderly patients, who need support to get to the practice and these early or late sessions fit with their supporters availability better.
We are grateful to the Western Cheshire PCT for their support in enabling this modest change to our working patterns. We know they are also well advanced in developing a 'late doctor' service in Chester, Ellesmere Port, Helsby and Tattenhall for our patients to be seen there up to 8p.m. and Saturday mornings. We know from our recent survey that the vast majority of our patients are happy with the service we provide but there was an indication that some later appointments would help the working population. We will keep you advised as this service is developed.
Not every doctor will be available early and late as we still need to be available during the day time for the majority. We have a range of starting times for the doctors and nurses and we offer a range of appointment start times throughout the day. But we will have a doctor on early and a doctor on late sessions every day. We will monitor the demand for these appointments as it may well mean we are not offering enough appointments during the daytime, we will discuss this with you before taking any action.
With the exception of our monthly training afternoon in common with all of the practices in our PCT when we are closed between 12:30 and 5p.m. the practice is open from 8a.m. until 7p.m Monday to Friday, we do not close for lunch.