We are able to offer appointments with a variety of clinicians. We have GPs, Advanced Nurse Practitioners, Treatment Area Nurses, specialist Paediatric Nurses, Mental Health Nurses, Physiotherapists at Isebrook and at the Practice. Evening and weekend appointments are our available for Long Term Condition reviews and the extended hours service at the Wellingborough Hub off additional GP and Nurse appointments.

All consultations are by appointment and should be booked via the Patient Services Team. When booking your appointment a member of the Patient Services Team will ask you for some details to understand your clinical needs and direct you to the appropriate care and treatment required. It is imperative you provide this information.

We offer a booking system for urgent and routine appointments. All patients will need to contact the Practice at 08.00 for morning appointments or 13.30 for appointments in the afternoon. If the problem is ongoing and not deemed to be of an urgent nature, we will book a routine appointment for you which could be up to two weeks. We may have to ask you to call the next day if we are only able to facilitate urgent requests due to patient demand or visit the Corby Urgent Care Centre.

If you wish to have a consultation with a clinician of your choice, we will endeavour to book you with this clinician. We may have to ask you to call the next day if all of the appointments have been booked as this will enable you to receive continuity of care thus helping you manage your problem better.

Telephone and Face to Face Appointments

You may be offered a telephone consultations in the first instance dependant on your clinical need. The Patient Services Team will ask you for a telephone number where you can be contacted for up to 2 hours. There may be a requirement to request you to send photos to the clinician prior to your consultation. The Patient Services Team will provide you with the details as to how this can be undertaken.
We shall contact you twice. If there is no answer you will need to contact the Practice to re-arrange the appointment. We cannot continually call you until we get an answer. This missed appointment will be classed as a “Did not attend” and our process in managing these will be followed.

Patients attending the Practice for a face to face appointment must check in at the reception desk. The Practice will, as far as practicable, see patients who arrive late, however this may be at the end of the Clinicians surgery and will therefore involve a considerable wait.

If you are less than 15 minutes late the Receptionist will speak with the Doctor or Nurse to see if they can see you at their first available opportunity.
If you are more than 15 minutes late it is likely that it will not be possible to see you. The Clinicians have very busy surgeries and therefore it will be necessary for you re-arrange the appointment at a later date.

Unable to attend your appointment?

We take the quality of the service we provide for patients very seriously and always strive to offer appointments as quickly as we can. We recognise that on occasions people’s circumstances change and there is a legitimate reason (medical or non-medical) that mean they no longer need the appointment. However, where this is the case we ask that patients (or someone that the patient has asked to support them) phone the Practice on 01933 233200 to let us know. We have an answering service available so you may leave a message. Alternatively, you can complete the Cancel an Appointment triage.

By doing this it will free up your appointment, which is no longer required, so that another patient can be booked in. This clearly allows us to make sure we can continue to offer appointments to patients as soon as possible, and make sure that people do not have to wait for longer periods of time before a doctor or nurse can see them.

If you have supplied us with a mobile number, we have a system whereby we will provide you with an automatic text message to remind you of your appointment. These messages will be sent to you on the day you book your appointment and also the day before your appointment. If on receipt of the text message you no longer need the appointment please phone us on the above number so that we can make your cancellation and free up the appointment for someone else who needs it. If you do not wish to receive the text messages, please contact the Practice to let us know.

Once again, we appreciate that people lead busy lives and often remembering appointments are difficult. We also appreciate that circumstances can change. However, I must advise you that it is the policy of the Practice to consider the removal of patients from the Practice register who continue to fail to attend their booked appointments.

Please remember to cancel unwanted appointments.

Wellingborough Hub GP Enhanced Access

Appointments are also available at our “Wellingborough Hub” GP Enhanced Access.This is a GP led evening and weekend service where local GPs and other Clinicians offer a range of services for patients registered at Practices within Wellingborough.

These appointments will be of help for patients who find it difficult to attend an appointment during the day, those who are working parents with children and/or those who are reliant on working carers to take them to appointments.

Appointments are for routine general issues and not urgent care.

Patients of Abbey Medical Practice can contact a member of the Patient Services Team and ask to book an appointment at the Hub. This is not a walk in service and patients will not been seen unless they have an appointment.

Where it is appropriate, we will refer our patients to their local Community Pharmacist for minor illness such as:

• Coughs and colds
• Acne
• Mild allergies
• Sinusitis
• Sore throat
• Cold Sores and mouth ulcers
• Earache
• Infected insect bite/stings
• Blisters/boils
• Impetigo
• Conjunctivitis
• Shingles
• Uncomplicated urinary tract infections (UTIs) in women

Our Patient Services Team we will recommend this service to enable us to free appointments for our clinicians to see our patients with more complex needs.

Home Visits

If you are too ill to come to the surgery and a visit is necessary at home, please telephone the Wellingborough surgery between 08:30-10:30.

Visits are normally made after morning surgery and can take considerably longer than a consultation at the surgery. For this reason it remains the Practice policy that all non-housebound patients attend the surgery.

If you have chest pain, extreme shortness of breath, severe abdominal pain or if you think your illness is significantly deteriorating please let the Patient Services Team know when contacting the Practice so that we can prioritise your assessment, care and treatment appropriately.