APPOINTMENTS
Appointment System
Urgent / Acute Appointments
If you require an urgent / acute medical appointment, we advise you ring the surgery between the hours of 08:00 - 10:00 am. We will NOT be providing appointments to patients who walk-in to the Practice. Our staff are trained care navigators who will help you seek medical advice with the correct Health Care Professional. Please be prepared to give some information and help the care navigators so they can help you. We appreciate it is not always possible to ring between the hours or appointments may have been filled, however, we have a Duty Doctor Oncall each day who will provide medical advice if you feel your symptoms are urgent, who are available Monday-Friday until 18:30pm. Alternatively you can phone NHS Direct on 111 or visit their website on www.111.nhs.uk. NHS Direct offers free expert health information and advice 24 hours a day. For deaf people and those hard of hearing, a telephone services is available on 0845 606 4647. If English is not your preferred language, you can choose to use a confidential translation service. Whatever the day or time, if you or someone else experiences severe chest pain, loss of blood or suspected broken bones, go to your nearest accident and emergency department or call 999.
Routine (Non-Urgent) Appointments
If your condition is non-urgent, we advise you click on this link to refer you to our self-care page or alternatively, we offer a number of pre-book appointments which can be booked up to two weeks in advance. We recommend you ring anytime after 10:00am where the care navigators will help you. You may have to wait longer for an appointment if you want to see a particular GP.
We also provide appointments which you can book Online. Please click on the link to take you to the page.
Tel: 01254 965150
Home Visits
Our doctors typically see four patients at the practice in the time it takes to do a single home visit. For this reason, we ask our patients to come to the practice if at all possible. However, this is not always the case, we can visit you at home if your condition means you cannot attend. If you are housebound, please phone surgery before 12:00pm to arrange a visit. Please be prepared to tell the receptionist about your condition so we can appropriately arrange the visits. The doctor or nurse practitioner will want to speak with you first to see the best cause of action. Home visits are normally made after morning surgeries. We also refer patients to the Acute Visiting Service where a clinician outside our Practice will come to do the visit.
After 12:00pm requests for home visits will still be taken and assessed.
Extended Access Appointments
The Practice is a member of Blackburn with Darwen’s Local Primary Care GP Federation. The Local Primary Care Federation runs a GP extended access service that provides additional appointments at four neighbourhood spoke surgeries.
Patients can be booked into one of the four spoke surgeries via the Practice Care Navigators accordingly.
Exceptions to Normal Opening Hours
Please see the Surgery Times section for dates when the practice is closed for Bank Holidays or Staff Training. If you call the surgery when we are closed you will be given information about the out of hours service.
Test Results
On average please allow 3-5 working days for your test results to come back from the hospital unless your doctor has advised otherwise. Please note that X-ray & MRI results may take up to 21 days. For your test results please telephone the main switchboard after 14:00pm. Sometimes, we cannot always give full results over the phone. If the result is complicated, or if the doctor wants to see you about the result, the clinician will ring you or reception will ring you to offer you an appointment based on the clinicians advice. We will only give results to the person who has had the test unless their is clear consent to give to a family member or carer. Please note, results coming from Preston do take longer to be received as they are out of our scope meaning we do not share the same computer system.
Due to the number of tests requested each day, it is impossible to get in touch with every patient, therefore, we would not ring patients back if the results have returned and actioned as Normal by the clinician. If you would like to know you results, we advise you sign up to our online services where you would be able to access your Health records or to ring us as above.
Cancelling an Appointment
It is your responsibility to keep your appointments. Doctor’s appointments are missed each and every day by people who either forget to show up and who fail to call and cancel their appointment.
Failing to attend or cancel your appointment puts additional pressure on your doctor and the cost to the NHS of is great. Therefore we implement a stringent ‘did not attend’ policy. You can cancel your appointment at any time up until one hour before you are due to arrive for your appointment. Remember if you cancel your appointment another patient can be seen.
You can cancel appointments by either contacting the surgery via our telephone line or by using the NHS App or NHS Online.
Text Reminder Service
We have a texting service which allows you to receive confirmation and reminders about your appointments.
To have this service you will need to register by completing a consent form.
Please remember to update your contact details with us when you change address, telephone numbers and email address.