Appointments at Faversham Medical; Practice

Appointments

We have produced this appointment guide to provide information to patients on how our appointment system works to assist patients in booking an appointment. The rules for booking appointments have been put in place by the doctors, and the staff are following the doctor’s instructions.

Patients can phone or attend the surgery (to make an appointment) any time between 8.00am and 6.30pm.
On-line appointments can be accessed at any time.
Please note appointments are booked for 10 minutes. If you feel that your case is going to be more complicated than this, please book a longer appointment.
Please do not bring a list of unrelated problems to be dealt with in one appointment. This leads either to insufficient time for the doctor to deal adequately with each problem or considerable delay to other waiting patients. Patients are advised to phone early to request an appointment for the same day.

We have many appointments that are bookable up to three weeks in advance with all doctors that are not on leave.

We have a limited number of “on the day” spaces which are only available for our staff to book on the day.

We operate an emergency clinic each morning and afternoon. Patients may be seen be either the Urgent Care Practitioner or a duty GP. The duty GP also covers any emergency visits, so may need to leave the surgery to attend to any visits. This will obviously lead to a delay for those patients booked into the emergency clinic. If you book into the emergency clinic and your problem is not deemed to be an emergency, you will be asked to book a routine appointment at another time. We do ask our receptionists to ask for some basic details of the reason for booking an emergency appointments, to allow us to prioritise the appointment. A patient with chest pain or breathlessness will need to be seen more urgently; therefore patients might not be seen in order of arrival, but in order of medical priority.

Patients can book a telephone consultation in the same way as a face-to-face consultation and a doctor will telephone the patient either at a specific time or after surgery.

Whenever possible, patients are advised to book appointments in advance or on-line as this will give the greatest choice of doctor, day and time.

We do try to deal with patient’s requests for appointments as efficiently as possible and we do ask for your help in doing this. Please bear with us if we are running late.

We offer a range of different appointments as below:

Routine clinic times are:
Monday-Friday:  8.40am – 11.50am and 3.00pm – 5.10pm
Saturdays: currently some Saturday morning booked only appointments
Appointments can be made:

In person by coming to the Reception Desk
By telephone on 01795 905577
On-line here

You can also access GP services via eConsult.

Please note appointments are booked for 10 minutes. If you feel that your case is going to be more complicated than this, please book a longer appointment. Please do not bring a list of unrelated problems to be dealt with in one appointment.
We offer advanced booking for routine appointments, which can be booked up to three weeks in advance depending on availability.
Please phone the surgery later in the morning or afternoon to book a routine appointment in advance. This is to allow patients who need to see a GP urgently on the day to get through on the telephone in the early morning.
The easiest way for you to book an advanced routine appointment is via the on-line appointment system, as this will allow you to see the widest range of convenient appointments available.
If you have a problem that you think cannot wait for a routine appointment we will try and see you on the same day. Please remember that these appointments are to deal with urgent issues only. You may be seen by either a Urgent Care Practitioner or a GP.
We offer telephone consultation appointments which are very useful in dealing with queries that don’t require physical examination or face to face discussion.
If the doctor/nurse decides you need to be seen, an appropriate arrangement can be made.

Other information related to appointments:

If you cannot attend an appointment for any reason please inform us as soon as possible in order for us to give the slot to someone else. Any appointments which are not cancelled will count as a DNA (Did Not Attend). Repeated DNAs will result in your ability to book appointments online being disabled, as well as us asking you to register at another practice.

If we hold your mobile number on your records, we may be able to send you a text to remind you of your appointment. You will be able to reply to this text should you wish to cancel your appointment.
When the practice is closed, you can either ring 111 for medical help or information, or attend our Urgent Treatment Centre which is open 8am to 8pm every day.
Please note that home visits from GP practices are not for emergency care. If you are suffering from any of the following, you should be attending the local A&E department or call 999.
– Severe breathing problems
– Chest pain and heart attacks
– Facial or limb weakness or slurred speech (possible stroke)
– Severe bleeding
– Major trauma
– Severe head injuries (minor head injuries can attend Faversham UTC)
– Lack of consciousness
– Severe burns or scalds (minor burns or scalds can attend Faversham UTC)
– Broken bones (minor broken bones can attend Faversham UTC)
– Severe abdominal pain
– Drug overdose
Whilst we encourage our patients to come to the surgery, where we have the proper equipment and facilities available, we do appreciate this is not always possible. In this respect, if you think you may need a home visit, you can help us by calling reception before 10:30am.
You cannot insist on a Home Visit. We will only visit you at home if we think that your medical condition requires it. You may only request a home visit if you are housebound or bedbound. Lack of transportation or poor weather conditions are not suitable reasons to request a home visit.
We may triage all visit requests by telephone first to determine if they think that your medical condition requires a visit, and they will also decide who may be best placed to visit (e.g Urgent Care Practitioner, Community Nurse, and GP) and how urgently a visit is needed. Most problems may be able to be dealt with over the telephone. Please bear this in mind and be prepared to provide suitable details to enable us to best determine the most appropriate action for you.
All parts of the practice are easily accessible by wheelchair and there are toilet facilities for the disabled.