July 2022
Dear Patients of Abbey Medical Practice
Firstly, I would like to take this opportunity to thank our patients for your kind words and support towards our staff at the Practice in the last few months. These heartfelt messages mean a lot to all of the staff as General Practice and the NHS as a whole continues to face incredible challenges. We continue to aspire to provide the best possible service putting the patients at the heart of this.
I would like to take this opportunity to update you on some changes at the Practice.
As you will know the government have relaxed the requirement to wear masks but as a Practice we will continue to ask patients to wear a mask when visiting the premises as this is to protect both patients and staff. The current rates of COVID are unfortunately beginning to increase significantly and the Practice is incredibly impacted when staff have to remain at home if they have contracted COVID and this will impact the service we are able to deliver to our patients. Consistently in the last 4 weeks we have had at least 6 members of staff off at any one time with COVID.
We regularly review our staff members so that we can provide a safe and efficient service to our patients. Currently, we are in the process of recruiting new GPs as well as other medical staff.
A new Practice Nurse and Advanced Nurse Practitioner have recently joined, as well as 8 new staff in our Patient Services Team. The Patient Services Team answer all of your phone calls and undertake the administration for the Practice. This is a difficult but vital job and the training takes 4-6 weeks before they can take calls from patients. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we support our new staff.
I am pleased to tell you that we will also have a new phone system from 10.00 on Thursday 21st July 2022. One of the benefits of this new system is that we will be able to monitor and analyse calls to and from the Practice more effectively.
From your perspective, very little will change. However you may notice:
- There will no longer be an engaged tone. All calls will be placed in the queue.
- There will be a new facility while you wait to be connected. You will be able to press the correct option and then you can hang up. You keep your place in the queue and the system will automatically phone you when you reach number 2 in the queue. There is no charge for the callback.
- The Practice telephone number will no longer be a “withheld” number. Understandably many patients don’t want to answer the phone from an unknown number and this can create extra work. Removing this should help patients and the Practice.
- Patients who call Earls Barton may be answered by someone at Earls Barton or Mannock Medical Centre in Wellingborough. This will not affect the service they receive.
- We will be able to put messages on the system immediately, so keeping patients more up to date.
There may be a few teething problems on the day and we would greatly appreciate your help and cooperation with the changeover to the new system
We have many staff answering the telephones and sometimes there are delays in being connected to speak to someone. We have asked our patients not to call with non-urgent matters at peak times (08.00 – 9.30 and 13.30 – 15.00). This would dramatically improve access to our Patient Services Team for patients with urgent needs and enable them to action non-urgent requests later in the day.
In addition to our service, I would like to remind patients that you are able to seek advice via Doctorlink, via the NHSApp, from your local Pharmacist or by contacting NHS111 via www.111.nhs.uk, by calling 111.
Kind regards
Dr Kate Hughes
Senior Partner