Hi everyone. We just wanted to thank you all, as always, for your patience and support as we continue to struggle through the current challenging times in the NHS.
At the moment we have been able to increase GP availability using regular locum GPs and have recruited two new members of our nursing team. All this helps us to improve our ability to see you when you need us.
Whilst access has therefore improved, we continue to receive over 60% more phone calls per day currently than we did before the Covid pandemic. Despite bringing in new members of that reception team it remains a challenge to keep on top of all the requests and correspondence we receive.
As a result, from Monday April 3rd we will stop taking direct phone calls between 1 and 14:00 and again after 18:00. Our door will remain open and there will be a phone number you can call if you need us and are unable to wait until we are available by phone again. If this does not work, and we are very open to receiving your experience of this, then we are more than prepared to try something else but, at the moment, we are struggling to manage the volume of requests and we hope this is a good way to help us stay up to date with the work we need to do.
We would be really grateful to receive your feedback and thank you, again, for your patience and support during these challenging times.