06/10/2022
This message is for patients registered with Regis Medical Centre, Oakham Surgery, Whiteheath Medical Centre, Mace Street Clinic, Great Bridge Health Centre and Lyndon Primary Care Centre.
Key messages:
• We know and are very sorry that some of you have experienced long waits to receive a response
• Our system has been overwhelmed by an unexpectedly high number of requests leading to a backlog
• We are working hard to clear the existing backlog; to do this we need to limit the number of requests we can accept each day
• Once the backlog is cleared, we will set a daily limit which allows us to respond to every request the day it is submitted
We are aware of difficulties some of our patients have faced in contacting the practice since the launch of our new system.
We are sorry that the system has not worked in the way we envisaged, meaning that some patients have waited several days for a response after contacting the practice. We recognise that this has caused some people distress which we regret.
Helping patients to access the care they need at the right time and with the right professional is our most important duty. General Practices in England have been struggling for some time to offer access to patients at the time and in the manner they would choose.
Our model, using the Anima platform, is intended to offer the opportunity for any of our patients to tell us the help they require with a ‘hub’ of GPs and other health professionals responding to each request.
We want you, our patients, to have the confidence that we will accept your request whether it is submitted online or by speaking to one of our telephony or reception teams, so that patients unable to use the internet are not disadvantaged.
We still believe this is the right approach so we can use our resources most efficiently for the benefit of our patients.
To do this we have, until the last few days, not placed any limit on the number of requests we accept each day – we wanted to avoid the previous situation of very long telephone waits for patients, often to be told there are no appointments left and to call back the next day. We have planned and staffed our hub and normal surgeries in the practices to meet a level of demand seen at other practices with similar systems in place.
The reality of offering unlimited access to submit requests has overwhelmed the system leading to long waits for some people.
We have prioritised contacting and, where needed, arranging appointments for people with the most urgent problems and many of you will have had rapid responses after submitting your request.
There is now a backlog of cases in the system which we need to work through in the coming days. Our team worked all weekend to get through most of the backlog and we are putting on extra sessions this weekend to do the same.
Until we have managed this backlog, we will need to apply a limit to the number of requests we are able to accept each day, thank you for bearing with us while we do this. Those of you who feel they need more urgent attention and are unable to submit a request may still call NHS 111.
Once we have cleared the backlog, we will then accept a larger number of requests each day up to the limit our hub team can process the same day. This means that no one will be left waiting several days for a response.
We want to make this work for all of you and thank you for your patience while we get it right and will update you again next week.
