Newsletter: July 2022

Appointments

From the 1st August 2022 we will be making changes to our appointment rota to increase availability of doctor appointments for pre-booking in advance. For any pre-booked appointment patients can choose whether they would like to be seen in person, or conduct this by telephone or video. These appointments can be booked with your Clinician of choice. Please do book online when able via the NHS App or SystemOnline.

We are still managing a large increased demand for appointments, so please bear with us as we gradually adjust the balance of advance and emergency slots – we need to maintain a safe level of care for urgent needs. Our receptionists will continue to ask if your issue is urgent, and there are slots reserved for these “on-the-day” emergencies. Urgent slots will be with any of our clinical team, including our advanced nurse Isabel Gomes and our Paramedic practitioner Louise O’Connor. You are unable to choose which clinician will contact you for urgent appointments as we work as a team to meet urgent demand.

Phone Lines

Our phone lines remain extremely busy, please bear with us. In the week of writing this newsletter we received over 500 calls every day. Our reception team are working tirelessly to answer your calls and help with your needs. Please consider if you can utilise online booking or the new contact us online feature (see below) and try to avoid calling for routine reasons before 10am when the phone lines are busiest. If you receive our automated queue message please do stay on the line rather than hanging up, on average we answer queued calls within 15 minutes. Our telephone provider shows that many people hang up after just 1-2 seconds.

We’d like to remind all patients that our receptionists are human and are doing their best to help. We understand that accessing care can at times be frustrating, and thank all our patients who remain calm and polite in dealing with our staff.

Contact Us Online

Since January we have had a new Contact us Online button on the surgery website homepage. When you click this button you will be directed to the Patient Online contact page. You will then be able to follow the step by step instructions to submit an admin query (for example if you’d like to ask about a recent test result, or to ask for a new medical certificate for work) or a medical query about a new or ongoing symptom.

We hope that this service will be helpful for patients with non-urgent needs who might be finding the telephone lines busy. Please note this is NOT for urgent medical needs. If you need help urgently please call the usual reception phone line.

We will answer queries to the best of our ability in a timely manner, and will respond to all within 4 days, but sometimes the advice will be that you need to book a physical appointment to best manage your health issue. This system will work alongside our usual Online Appointment booking system via SystemOnline and the NHS App.

Please do not use this system to request your usual repeat prescriptions, you will be directed back to the many ways you can request these (paper repeat slips, via SystemOnline or via the NHS App).

New Services Across Meridian Primary Care Network (PCN)

Bourn Surgery has been part of Meridian PCN since 2019. As we emerge from the pandemic the PCN team are starting to launch some exciting new services available to all Bourn Patients. They will be sending out text messages to raise awareness, and more information can be found on the PCN website

Recently Launched Services Include:

• Long Covid support in group clinics or 1:1 with our Health Coaches
• Menopause support groups, online, face to face, groups and 1:1
• Carer’s Café launches 4th August at The Community Hub in Melbourn, the first Thursday of every month at 2pm
• Follow up to patients who have had a previously raised blood pressure, to ensure this is monitored in case they have undiagnosed hypertension, and offering lifestyle support via Health Coaches

Please visit the PCN website to find out how to contact the team

Published: Jul 1, 2022