National Receptionists Day: A Letter to Patients

Today is National Receptionists Day (Wednesday 08 May) and I know many patients will join me in saying a huge thank you to Vandana, Tracey, Marie, Jane, Sue and Alex for everything they do and more for Apex Medical Practice. Without them, we would close tomorrow; they work so hard to help every patient who contacts us and really feel it when they inevitably can’t get to everybody quickly enough, which leads me to ask you a big favour…
Help us to help you
Call volumes have been increasing a lot recently and I’ve been working with the receptionists to find out why. Demand has always been high, just like the rest of the NHS, but we generally manage access and calls coming into the practice reasonably well. The most common reasons are:
- Patients checking up on hospital referrals
- Questions about repeat prescriptions and test results
- Requesting an appointment
All of these things can be checked online, saving you a phone call or waiting on hold. Here’s how:
To check on a hospital referral
If you’re waiting for an outpatient appointment or treatment at Medway NHS Foundation Trust, you can find typical waiting times and contact details to check on the progress of your referral on the My Planned Care website.
When we refer you to the hospital, it’s because you need specialist care, tests or treatments that our team doesn’t have the expertise or facilities to provide. Unfortunately, we don’t have access to the hospital’s booking system either so we can’t see what happens after we’ve made a referral for you.
The My Planned Care website details what you should do and which hospital department you should contact if your condition gets worse while you wait.
To check on a repeat prescription
Almost half of Apex patients are already saving time by ordering repeat prescriptions using the NHS App. It’s quick, free, and easy to use, and it now shows you when we’ve approved your request and when the prescription is with your chosen pharmacy.
- Simply login to the NHS App (or sign up in minutes from your phone or laptop if you haven’t already).
- Tap on Your Health > View and manage your prescriptions
- Click on Status of your requests to check when we have reviewed and approved your repeat prescriptions.
- Tap on Your approved prescriptions to view prescriptions ready for your chosen pharmacy to prepare.
Remember: we say give 5 working days for our team to sign your repeat prescription and then give the pharmacy team time to prepare your prescription. If you need your medicines urgently or you have any questions about your prescription, always contact your pharmacy first.
To check on test results
Your GP, nurse or health professional will let you know when we expect to get your test results back at your appointment.
If your test results show that you need more tests or treatment, we will contact you. If everything is okay, we won’t.
To request an appointment
E-consult is our online GP system where you can request appointments. It’s checked multiple times each hour when we’re open so we can watch out and respond to urgent and routine appointment requests. You’ll always receive a response by the end of the next working day – but usually sooner when we’re open.
You can access E-consult here on our website or through the NHS App under Services. You can also use this for asking questions about test results, requesting a sick note or any other admin queries you might have.
To find out what’s happening at the practice
Everyone’s busy and we know it’s hard to keep in touch between appointments so Jo, our lovely health and wellbeing coordinator and the doctors write a monthly newsletter, posted on our website with paper copies in the waiting room, about everything that’s happening at Apex.
If you head to the home page on our website, you can sign-up to our newsletters to make sure you never miss an issue again or you can read our May newsletter here.
I hope that’s been useful for you and will help you if you need to contact us for anything soon. If you and other patients reading this today can help by going online wherever possible, we can help you faster and free up the phone lines for older patients who can’t get online.
All the best and many thanks again for your continued support 🙏
Hayley
Practice Manager – Apex Medical Practice