Appointments

How to Make an Appointment

Appointments may be booked in several ways: All requests for GP appointments are subject to clinical triage and therefore cannot be made online in the first instance. Should you wish to amend a booked appointment please contact the care navigation team for assistance

Online Triage

For medical or administration enquiries please complete an online consultation.

Please note decisions will be made by a GP on clinical need and not all encounters will result in an appointment being offered.

Your request will be reviewed and you will be advised of a timeframe when this will be actioned by. Please do not use this facility to communicate urgent medical concerns or to request repeat medication (please visit our prescribing page for more information). If you are contacting us after 16.30 then please be aware that your issue will not be reviewed on the same day.

Telephone

• All sites – Tel 0208 295 8280

We understand our telephone lines do get very busy and we appreciate your patience whilst we manage enquiries. The telephone lines do offer a call back service when the queue reaches capacity. We would encourage you to utilise the online triage facility whenever possible to take the pressure off the telephone lines for those who need to use them

Online

Patients can book some appointments with some of the clinicians up to 6 weeks in advance using online services but please note as above that requests to see some clinicians are first subject to triage so you will need to submit an online consultation or speak with the care navigation team.

In Person

Patients can visit either site to book an appointment. iPads are available at both sites to input your appointment request in confidence. If you attend the desk the same format will be utilised as if you contacted us online or telephoned. Information will be taken from you and passed to a clinician to be triaged. You will be contacted with the outcome and further information.

Further Information

The Chislehurst Partnership patient appointments with a variety of qualified clinicians. Please advise the person who triages your request whether you would prefer a telephone or face to face consultation. We have asked our care navigation team to guide you to the most appropriate clinician for your needs. Routine appointments are for 10 minutes. Sometimes patients need longer and sometimes patients would like to address more than one problem in that visit. It may be necessary to book more than one appointment to address your concerns. Should you have more than one concern to discuss, then please let us know at the point of triage.

Please note we are unable to give advice or book a telephone consultation for a patient who is outside the UK. If you are abroad you should seek advice from the nearest local service or contact us on your return.

Housebound Patients

Any patients who are known to be housebound and are unable to get to the surgery, please contact the practice by 10am should you require medical assistance for urgent/same day advice. Please be aware you may be contacted by a clinician other than a GP for example a Paramedic or a Nurse Practitioner.

Urgent appointments

Please inform the receptionist if you feel the matter is more urgent than the time slot you have been offered. If the problem is perceived to be so urgent that you need to be seen the same day please contact us as soon as possible so your problem can be triaged appropriately.

Choice of Practitioner

All patients have the right to express a preference for a particular practitioner; this should be stated when speaking to the care navigators at the time of booking. We will do our best to accommodate requests however this may necessitate a longer wait time so we might offer you a different clinician in order to be seen within the most suitable timeframe

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Interpreting and Translation Support

The Practice has a professional translating service to offer translation for patients whose first language is not English.

The service can also provide a BSL interpreter to provide sign language for patients with hearing difficulties.

Please advise the team when making an appointment that you require this support, so this can be arranged for your appointment.

Did Not Attends (DNA’s)

Each year at least 1,000 patients do not keep their booked appointments. This equates to a 3-hour surgery each week, 2 days of a doctors time per month or almost 5 weeks of a doctors time a year.

Please be considerate, if you are unable to keep an appointment then please inform us so that we can use that appointment for someone else. This can be done 24 hours a day 7 days a week using the telephone messaging service on 0208 295 8280 .