At this very difficult time the NHS is under great strain and we need to use our resources in the safest and most efficient way to be able to deal with this developing emergency situation and so we ask for your help to make the best use of the services that we provide.
Attendance Restrictions
We are taking measures to reduce the spread of infection and so from Monday 23rd March 2020 attendance in person at the surgery will only be permitted if you have a booked appointment. If you wish to drop off any paperwork you will need to leave them in the box provided at the surgery entrance. Telephone the surgery with regard to any paperwork collection but do note that these can now often be dealt with by other methods. Please note that you will not be able to discuss any matters face to face with the reception team.
Routine check-ups
At this time of heightened risk we may delay some of the routine annual check- ups to allow our teams to deal with the other problems related to Coronavirus. In the short term this will not place you at any risk and so please do continue with your regular If you feel that there is a more urgent need to review you for some reason do contact us and if we also consider an earlier review is needed we will contact you.
Blood Tests
Dedicated blood test clinics have been cancelled and patients will now need to take their blood forms to Epsom Hospital for this to be done instead between 8-30 am – 4-45 If you currently have a surgery appointment booked and wish to do this please call the surgery and we will send you your form.
Telephone Consultations
Across the UK all GP practices are trying to increase the use of technology to communicate with patients. We know from experience that many problems can be dealt on the telephone and we have therefore increased the proportion of all our appointments that are of this type and all on-line accessible appointments are telephone only for.
Text services
This has become an efficient way to send a message to you On occasions now we may ask you to send a one-time-only reply back to us to respond to a specific question. Furthermore we now have the facility to send you medical certificates and many private reports or letters using the text services. When received you simply click on the link and enter your date of birth. Again this reduces attendance at the surgery itself so is safer for all. If you feel we do not have your correct mobile number do ensure that you let us know.
On-Line Access
We strongly advocate the use of this service which allows you to book telephone consultations, request regular repeat medications and view your test results so saving time for everyone and reducing unnecessary visits to the surgery. You can apply for access by looking at co.uk and selecting ‘online services’.
Prescription supplies
To avoid stock shortages and excessive practice workload do not order your repeat prescriptions too early in order to stock up. At this challenging time we are happy to receive requests up to 1 week before you run out of medication as this gives us more time to process the request.
Prescription Requests
We now do expect all patients to move to on-line requests or ask their pharmacist to order rather than delivering requests to the surgery but if you do have to then please leave the requests in the box at the surgery entrance.
Prescription Collection
Most of our patients use the Electronic Prescription Service [EPS] as this allows us to send the prescriptions directly to your named pharmacist and prescriptions simply do not get Please sign up NOW as collection at the surgery places you and others at greater infection risk. It’s easy – just ask your regular community pharmacist to sign you up.
We will update your further as the situation changes at the surgery.