Appointments

How To Make An Appointment

You can make an appointment in the following ways:

Routine Appointments

Please try to book your appointments well in advance. Appointments can be booked up to six weeks in advance for most clinicians. If the clinician has said “See me again in six weeks”, do not leave it six weeks before you try to book the appointment. Book it on your way out of the surgery.

Routine appointments are 10 minutes long and the clinicians will endeavour to see you as near to your appointment time as possible. Some delay is inevitable given the variety of patient problems that may be seen during a surgery.

The doctors can only see one person for one problem in one 10 minute appointment. If you have multiple or complex problems, please request a double appointment.

Urgent Appointments

Heartwood clinicians will always endeavour to see you as soon as possible should you have an emergency medical need. We have appointments available every day for emergencies only.

We have a doctor assigned each day to cover for medical emergencies or medical problems. With this is mind, you may not see the doctor of your choice.

We do need your co-operation to ensure that medical emergencies are prioritised.  Over the last few months we have had increasing numbers of patients trying to access emergency appointments for routine issues. This prevents us from seeing genuine emergency cases. It is Heartwood policy for the clinician to inform you of other services, treatment or appointment options that may be more appropriate if your problem is not deemed to be an emergency.

Telephone Consultations

We offer a limited number of telephone call-back appointments each day for routine issues that do not require a face to face appointment. For example for discussing test results, discussing referrals, or medical certificates.

Telephone calls saves the doctor time for more serious problems. If you have a mobile, the doctor can call you wherever you are, you dont have to wait in.

Dental Appointments

If you have an urgent dental problem, such as toothache or a dental abscess, you should see a dentist not your GP.

If you have a regular dentist you should telephone them and arrange an urgent appointment. If they are closed there should be an answer phone message with the telephone number of the local dentist covering emergencies. If you have any trouble getting through, call 111 for advice.

Missed Appointments

Every day many appointments are wasted by people failing to attend. This is disappointing as those appointments could have been given to someone else.

If you are unable to attend, please contact the surgery in advance. We operate an automated SMS text messaging reminder service for all appointments.

If you miss three or more appointments you will receive a written notification and warning and possible removal from our list.

Cancelling appointments

If you are unable to keep an appointment, please let us know as soon as possible by telephone 01283 818 124, this may enable someone else to be seen.