Hartshill Medical Centre Total Triage                       

As from 4/3/24, a new way to book your appointment. 

Appointments to see a GP have always been booked by calling reception and asking for an appointment on a ‘first-come first-served’ basis. While this used to work in the past, we are aware that it can be frustrating and difficult for people to get appointments at times. We need to do something about the ‘8am rush’, which is why we introduced our new phone call back feature, but we also intend to bring in a new system altogether.

The new system is called Total Triage. This means that instead of phoning first thing in the morning most people will fill in an online form (accessed from the homepage on the practice website at www.hartshillmedicalcentre.co.uk) that is then reviewed by a GP to determine the urgency of the appointment and the right place for you to be seen and by whom. This might not always be by seeing a GP, as there is now a wider NHS team including social prescribers, mental health workers and the Pharmacy First service.

Requests should be submitted before 1.00pm on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays & Fridays and before 10.30am on Thursdays.

To submit a request for an appointment, please click on this link

Appointments with the Nurse or Health Care Assistant will be booked in the normal way, by phoning reception. 

All patients registered with Hartshill Medical Centre can access a range of pre-bookable appointments 6 days a week. This may not be at your usual practice, but at a practice that is within our ABC Primary Care Network (PCN).

Patients are requested, where possible, to telephone before 10:00am if a home visit is required that day.

We would request that, apart from the genuinely housebound, all other patients attend the surgery rather than request a home visit because of the extra time home visiting takes. On average four to five patients can be seen in surgery in the time it takes to do a single house call. In addition, the care that can be offered due to the lack of adequate lighting, examination facilities and equipment means that you may not receive as good a service as the doctor may be able to offer if you came to the surgery.

Please note that the doctor may telephone you rather than visit you if this is medically appropriate. Ultimately it is the doctors right to decide whether or not a visit is appropriate for a particular set of circumstances.

In some situations, your Doctor may need to perform intimate examinations. During these, another person will be present to safeguard you and the Doctor. If you require a chaperone for any other examination, please indicate this to your Doctor.

If you require an interpreter during your consultation with your Doctor/Nurse, please notify our reception team who will arrange this for you.

If you cannot make your appointment, please contact the surgery to give us as much notice as possible, so we can try and give the appointment to somebody else who needs it.

Failing to attend an appointment results in many appointments being lost each week.  We regularly monitor our appointment attendence and patients failing to notify the surgery will be contacted.

We regularly review non-attendances and patients failing to attend may be contacted to discuss this. 

Repeated failure to attend for an appointment, without prior notice, may result in removal from the Practice list. 

We are an established teaching practice involved in Postgraduate Training for GP Registrars and Undergraduate Teaching for Keele University Medical Students. We hope you make them welcome. 

We teach medical students within the practice. Patients are asked if they are willing to consult with a student initially.  The student will consult patients independently, then a GP will always join the consultation to ensure the correct history has been taken, examinations carried out and the care plan for the patient discussed.  This is a very important part of the student's training and we hope you are able to help. However, if you feel you would rather not see a student, an appointment will be made with a GP.

Occasionally, we may ask for your written consent for your consultation to be videotaped for teaching purposes. You are under no obligation to consent. The videos will be used for teaching purposes only and will only be seen by your Doctor and the Registrar or Student.

Our Practice Nurses are Mentors for the training of New Smear Takers and may have other nurses under supervision at your appointment.

Hartshill Medical Centre is regularly visited by independent Doctors to ensure that standards remain high for teaching purposes. We hope you will welcome our Registrars and Students.