Our appointment system

Like other surgeries, it can sometimes appear difficult to get an appointment with the GP you ask for, at your preferred time. Despite this we aim to offer appointments for patients who need to be seen on the day as well as for those who wish to book ahead.

How to make an appointment

There are three ways to make an appointment at our Surgery: 

• Appointments can be booked on the phone by speaking to a receptionist on 01394 615500 and Option 1 between 08:00 and 18:30 any day Monday to Friday.
• By using the Automated telephone booking service 'Patient Partner' which is available 24/7 on 01394 615500 and option 0
• You can book appointments online on EMIS Access by registering for this service at our reception Desk and clicking the link on this page.

I’d like to be seen today…

Patients who request “same day” appointments are deemed to be in need of immediate, urgent or emergency care.  If you phone up asking to be seen that day, our receptionists may ask you for some information about your condition as these appointments are mainly for immediate and necessary cases, as detailed above, rather than for routine check-ups and are only for our registered patients and are by appointment only, 

We are not a "walk in centre" the closest place for this is: The Riverside Clinic 2 Landseer Road, Ipswich, IP3 0AZ which is open 8am - 10pm 7days a week

I’d like to book ahead…

Patients who choose to pre-book appointments usually have routine or non-life threatening conditions.  We try hard to ensure that appointments can be booked as far in advance as possible; this can be up to six weeks ahead; although varies dependant upon GP availability.

Appointments with a specific GP

The demand for appointments with the GP Partners (who you are registered with as your “usual doctor”) often exceeds the number of appointments available. Therefore patients are often disappointed to hear that there is a long delay in being able to get an appointment with them.  Whilst we appreciate that many of you prefer being seen by your registered GP if, or when, there is a long wait we need to be able to offer an alterative - therefore appointments are routinely offered with our other GPs (Drs Fairweather, Enslin & Townsley).

We also offer appointments in clinics run by our qualified nurse Practitioner, Catriona McCallum. She works closely with our doctors and is able to assess, review and treat a wide range of conditions and is able to prescribe some medications independently.

Whilst we do not accept clinical enquiries via email (for security reasons) we are able to seek telephone advice from our GPs on request however this is a non-urgent service and we cannot guarantee a same-day response. Our receptionists may ask you for information about your condition to allow the GPs to prioritise these call back requests in terms of clinical need. We appreciate that some patients may well feel uncomfortable with this, and you are perfectly free to decline to give such information, however please be aware it may delay your response.

Nurse Practitioner Appointments

We offer appointments in clinics run by our qualified Nurse Practitioner, Catriona McCallum. She works closely with our doctors and is able to assess, review and treat a wide range of conditions and is able to prescribe some medications independently. 

CANCELLING APPOINTMENTS?

If you cannot keep your appointment, please let us know as soon as possible, so that we can offer it to another patient.

How to make an appointment using Patient Partner Telephone Booking System

We now have a new automated telephone booking system in place known as 'Patient Partner' it has been bolted onto our current telephone system and it allows you to bypass the reception and book an appointment using the 'automated service'. The automated service acts like another receptionist in a sense that it will offer you the same available GP appointments as the receptionists would. You can use the automated service just to check the date and time of an appointment that you have already booked with the surgery via any booking method (online, patient partner, reception) aswell as cancelling an appointment you have already booked.

The service is available 24/7 allowing you the opportunity to book/check/cancel an appointment whenever YOU want to.

Patient Partner is simple to use and the only information you require is your Date of Birth and an up to date telephone number which matches the one we have on file for you, so it is important to inform us of any telephone number changes immediately.

To access Patient Partner all you need to do is dial our surgery number as normal 01394 615500 and you will be greeted with some options to choose from, to use the automated booking service you will need to press '0' on your dial pad and then 'Listen carfully' to the instructions which will talk you through what you need to press on your dial pad.

Unfortunately due to the complexity of nurse appoinments needing different time allocations for different procedures we are unable to offer these appointments via the Automated service, only GP appoinments can be made using this service, if you require an appoinment with a nurse you will need to speak to the reception team in order to book one of these

Telephone Advice

Whilst we do not accept clinical enquiries via email (for security reasons) we are able to seek telephone advice from our GPs on request however this is a non-urgent service and we cannot guarantee a same-day response.

Our receptionists may ask you for information about your condition to allow the GPs to prioritise these call back requests in terms of clinical need.

We appreciate that some patients may well feel uncomfortable with this, and you are perfectly free to decline to give such information, however please be aware it may delay your response.

Home Visits

If possible please try to telephone reception before 10:00 if you require a home visit.

A doctor or nurse may phone you back as it may be that your problem can be dealt with by telephone advice, or that it would be more appropriate to send a nurse, or indeed arrange a hospital attendance.

House visits are only available for patients who are housebound because of illness or disability.

Please remember that several patients can be seen in the practice in the time that it takes to make one home visit. There are also better facilities for examining and treating patients at the surgery.