Grand Drive Surgery serves approximately 9000 patients.
In addition to seeing you for appointments, each week your GP Practice team process approximately:
- 800 documents – these are mostly hospital letters and correspondence from community services about patients. Any new problems identified need adding to the patient’s record, any medication changes or further investigations or follow up with the GP need to be arranged, and any other onward referrals made.
- 650 prescriptions – approximately 40% of these will require some sort of review with a patient for example, blood test or blood pressure monitoring, or an appointment arranging with the patient to see how the medication is working for them and whether the treatment needs changing. Your GP has to go into your medical record to see what has happened with your health and treatments in the last 12 months. Best practice is that all regularly prescribed medications should be reviewed at least yearly.
- 500 test results including blood tests, urine samples, scan results – which may then lead to contacting the patient, adjusting their treatment or onward referral.
- 300 tasks – these are mainly patient requests through reception, or information patients are giving us on our request such as blood pressure readings, which are added to their medical record and any further actions need arranging.
- 2500 telephone calls, 900 of these on Monday which is about 86 calls per hour. On other weekdays we deal with about 400 calls per day.
Please remember
PRESCRIPTION REQUESTS – take 2 working days because your GP may have to consult your record, see whether your monitoring is up to date and take some action before prescribing.
REQUESTS FOR LETTERS/COMPLETION OF ADMINISTRATIVE DOCUMENTS LIKE INSURANCE – Please allow 1 full working week for these to be actioned, as your GP always needs to prioritize unwell patients and clinical care before coming to these matters.
FIT NOTES – are legal documents advising your employer and HMRC about your ability to perform the usual role you have. There are ‘not fit for work’ and ‘may be fit for some work’ notes. A GP needs to have a good understanding therefore, of your symptoms and your job role in order to complete them. Please complete a self certificate for 1 week before approaching your GP for a fit note. We may be able to use hospital attendances/letters to support our decision to issue them or you may need to speak to the GP if you have not had a recent consultation about the relevant complaint. We can back date medical certificates so the correct dates can be covered, even if the GP is unable to action a certificate on the day you request it.
TEST RESULTS – Any clinical staff who order tests will then receive the results back. If the results are concerning enough that a patient cannot wait for 2-3 weeks to discuss them, the GP, Pharmacist, Nurse or Physiotherapist will make contact with you. If they ask reception to call you to book a routine appointment, that is because the matter can wait that long. Asking to speak to your Clinician sooner means that you are asking for an appointment that does not exist. Please do be patient.
APPOINTMENTS – can be challenging to book. We have chosen to continue the traditional system of allowing patients to book appointments in advance with a clinician of choice, because we want to preserve continuity of care. However appointments are booked up quickly. We offer as many appointments as we can, and encourage you to make use of our Clinical Pharmacists for your routine care such as medication reviews. All appointments are released both via phone at reception and on the Patient Access app. Remember we have a duty doctor available every weekday to deal with urgent medical matters that cannot wait for a routine appointment. The duty GP can be extremely busy, dealing with up to 80 patients per day. Please try to use this service responsibly; if you have mild symptoms, longstanding non changing symptoms or are happy to wait for a routine appointment, please do.
