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Urgent and Routine Demand

We have experienced an unprecedented demand for urgent, on the day demand over the last few months combined with a high level of short term clinician sickness. This has led to us needing to cancel a huge number of routine clinics, pushing back the wait for a routine appointment past the 3-4 weeks mark.

High quality care is important to us, encouraging continuity and care tailored to the individual. Concentrating our efforts on tackling the urgent care demand has hindered our ability to timely assess the patients awaiting important routine care and follow up. The government is keen for both general practice and the hospital to concentrate efforts on reducing the routine backlog that has amassed over the past two years.

We now want to ensure our patients have fair access to both on the day, urgent care and routine care form long term conditions. In order to do this we have to have a defined threshold or “cap” to our urgent care appointments. This means that once we have filled all the urgent care offering on the day, the duty team will be informing patients that we are full, and for urgent problems they need to use NHS111 (online, via the NHSapp or by phone) or use other sources of advice such as a community pharmacy or the NHS website. Vulnerable patients, such as those who are frail, aged under 5, with severe mental illness or with palliative care needs, will still be able to get in touch whenever they need us while open. 

The Access Team will be monitoring this change in system on a regular basis. Patient safety is important to us and the extending routine waits was a major concern, hence why the partnership felt that we needed to act. Our clinical staff were absorbing more and more workload, finishing later and later and it is important to protect #teamPMG. Burnout in general practice is a growing problem, ensuring our staff have a safe number of patients to assess each day is an important step to providing holistic, high quality patient care.

Please still use the prioryCARE form or call 01904 404100 to request an appointment with a clinician.