Appointments

How to contact us and request an appointment:

If you need to access clinical care at Priory Medical Group, you can do this a number of ways as below. We want to ensure a safe and fair access to our appointments for all patients registered with us. Whether you contact us by phone, walk in to our reception desk or use the online tool, your request for an appointment will be processed in the same way.

Online:
> You can currently access the prioryCARE from 5am to 6pm Monday to Friday. You will navigate to a form which gives you multiple options. It is the quickest way to let us know about new or ongoing symptoms, request a fit note, arrange an appointment with a nurse for a routine injection or update your contact details and much more. Do spend some time familiarising yourself with the different tiles or watch our short videos on YouTube.

Click here to use the prioryCARE form

> Patients who choose the “new health problem" tile will be taken through a series of questions about their symptoms. This helps us to triage your problem (i.e. determine the urgency) and the query is then directed to the most appropriate team.

> From December 2022 we trialled turning off the prioryCARE form over the weekend and during the evening as we had been experiencing extremely high demand. This helped us manage our urgent workflow and for the forseeable future will be keeping the prioryCARE form turned off overnight and over weekends. We are trying as hard as we can to assess as many patients as we can every day, but we need to ensure we continue to provide high quality care and consider the safety of our staff when services are so stretched. We continue to review this regularly and will keep our patients up to date with any changes going forward.

If you are unwell or need urgent medical advice over the weekend/weekday evening please use NHS111 or visit your local community pharmacy if appropriate.

You can also use the NHSapp to book appointments for cervical screening (smear test) and to arrange a time to use the blood pressure machine in our reception areas.

By phone:
Call 01904 404100 8am to 6pm Monday to Friday. If you are requesting an appointment for a new problem, our patient central team will go through a series of questions with you, similar to that of the online triage tool.

In person:
Eight of our reception desks remain available to our patients daily, Cherry St is open one and a half days a week. Our highly trained patient care navigators (receptionists) will ask for some detail relating to your query and can support you with the online form if you would like some help to use it next time.

How long will it take to get an appointment?

If you have a new problem or worsening symptoms of an existing problem please use the "new health problem" tile and then choose the appropriate heading (general health, mental health, back/bone/joint/muscle problem). You will be asked to answer a series of questions, it is important you respond as accurately as possible as this is how urgency is assigned by the Klinik triage tool. New problems are allocated as either URGENT or ROUTINE.

Continuity of care is really important to us and our patients. If you have an ongoing problem and would like routine follow up consultation with the same clinician (where possible) please use the prioryCARE form and choose the "ongoing problem/follow up" tile.

• Urgent: Requests deemed urgent will be managed by our clinical team within 1 working day - you might receive a call, SMS or be asked to attend in person depending on your clinical symptoms. Around 70% of all new requests are allocated as urgent cases.

• Routine: We try our hardest to manage routine/follow up consultation requests within 4 to 5 weeks, this may occasionally be extended due to high demand, staff absence or bank holidays. For non-urgent/ongoing issues, the reception team will text or call you to confirm when a clinician will be contacting you. If you have worsening symptoms please contact us again using the prioryCARE form and "new problem" tile, phone us on 01904 404100 or use NHS111. We know it can feel a long time to wait, we are doing everything we can to book everyone in for an appointment as quickly as possible.
• Please consider using self-care or attending a community pharmacy to ask for advice if you have a minor ailment. If your symptoms have resolved before we have booked you an appointment, please contact us to let us know.

Home visits

If you or your relative is housebound and would like to request medical care, please phone us on 01904 404100 or discuss with a patient care navigator (receptionist) on site. Requests for home visits received before midday will generally be assessed on the same day. Visits requested after this time will be triaged and if deemed urgent will be actioned by the on call team that day.