What is Total Triage?
Total Triage is a better, more effective way of dealing with the clinical queries and requests that you submit to us. These will now go to a GP for consideration before anything is done with the query or request.
Non-urgent advice: How will this work?
Give you an on-the-day face-to-face or telephone appointment with an appropriate clinician.
OR give you a routine appointment with an appropriate clinician e.g. GP, nurse practitioner, clinical pharmacist etc.
OR direct you to another service e.g. pharmacy etc.
All non-clinical queries or requests will be handled in the normal way.
Why are we doing this?
Demand for access to primary care is now far outstripping our resources and because of this, the way we currently handle your clinical queries and requests needs to evolve so that we can continue to provide an effective and safe service.
So, we need to work smarter.
Non-urgent advice: Here is an example of how this effects your General Practice
290 appointments per day on average.
From 1st to 6th April 2024, we received a total of 4,484 calls which is an average of 747 calls per day.
We struggle to recruit, we don’t have access to any more consulting rooms, and funding for GP practices has decreased 3.3% overall (which works out as 7% per patient) so we cannot expand our services any further.
All these factors means that we are reacting to your queries and request, rather than managing them.
Non-urgent advice: Our situation is typical of the current state of primary care
Average number of patients per GP is responsible for has increased by nearly 17% since 2015 to 2,260.
There are now only 0.44 fully qualified GPs per 1,000 patients in England. This is down from 0.52 in 2015 (there wrere just 27,500 Full Time Equivalent GP’s working in primary care in February 2024).
Each GP is, on average, responsible for 2,298 patients.
Despite these restrictions, in January 2024, nationally GP practices delivered 32.5 million appointments (45% of which were delivered on same day) up from 27.8million in Jan 2019. An average of 1.40 million appointments per day were booked in the past year (March 2023 to February 2024) and for every £1 invested in primary care £14 is delivered in productivity across the working community (ref. BMA and RCGP)
Because of these factors, we cannot continue to work the way we are currently doing. This leads to frustration for both you, the patients, and our staff.
How will Total Triage work?
From 1st June 2024 how we deal with clinical queries and requests will change.
Instead of simply phoning us and possibly waiting ages to be answered, you will be now be able to contact us from 7.00am to 15.00pm every working day and submit a clinical or non-clinical query or request via the following methods:
Non-urgent advice: Via our website
at the top of the home page.
On the next page select ‘Start now‘.
This will take you to a request page where you will need to select either ‘Admin query’, ‘Medical request’
or seek ‘Online advice’.
Dependent on the type of query you have, select either ‘Admin’ query’ or ‘Medical request’.
This will then take you through a series of questions which creates a form.
Complete the form and press ‘Submit’.
Non-urgent advice: Via the NHS App
Select the “Services” option at the bottom of the screen, then “Ask your GP for medical advice“. You will be asked to confirm whether you are experiencing any symptoms.
You’ll then be able to answer questions to submit a request to get help regarding a medical issue. You will need to verify if the request is for yourself or someone else. Once all of the requested information is completed and submitted, you’ll be taken to a confirmation page.
Submitting an admin query via the NHS App:
Select the “Services” option at the bottom of the screen, then “Ask your GP surgery a question“. You will be asked to confirm whether you are experiencing any symptoms then asked to select one of these admin query options: Doctors Letter; Fit (sick) note; Referral follow-up; Test results or Something else.
Once you choose your preferred method of contact, you will be asked to review the request before it is completed and submitted. Once all of the requested information is completed and submitted, you’ll be taken to a confirmation page.
Whatever way you submit the form, it will go through the same process:
Medical request:
- will go to a GP who will assess your request’ and make a clinical assessment on how to proceed with your request based on the information you provide. For example, you may receive a text asking you to book in online for an appointment or you may be phoned to call you in for an urgent appointment or you may be told to go and see your local pharmacist.
Non-clinical queries and requests
- will be managed through the process as normal. For example, medicine queries will be sent to our clinical pharmacist etc.
Our response time to your query/request will be based on clinical assessment. But this does mean that you will no longer be able to phone in and try and book an appointment with us.
Non-urgent advice: Benefits for you, our patient
End the 8.00am rush.
Seriously reduce the time you waste trying to get through to us on the telephone.
Provide clinical appointments for you based on your actual clinical need.
This will help us to acheive greater staff retention and will help our clinical and admin staff to deliver a better service for our ever growing patient population
And ultimatly provide a better service for you, our patients.