Get the Care You Need Quicker
Digital tools are a massive step forward for our patients and our population.
We can actually help ourselves.
We can follow exercises, we can follow advice.
We can see when they’re red flags, when we have to see a clinician and we have to accelerate care for ourselves and ask for more.
This is about our entire population, our entire community.
They’re actually doing better for all of us.
So we’re trying to really empower the patient so that we can self refer as much as possible.
Nowadays what we can do is we can self refer to places like sexual health services for mental health, for pharmacy services, for optometry services.
We can even do things like early pregnancy unit where we can ring them ourselves without having to contact our general practise.
The modern world is moving forwards and we do have to use technology to help ourselves and help our communities and our populations live better, live more happily and more healthily.
The NHS app is massively important.
It’s not hard to register and log on and have access to the app on your mobile phone.
It lets you see your healthcare record.
It lets you use the apps like Patient Know Best.
It also helps you order your repeat prescriptions and know what I’ve written in your notes just moments ago.
The NHS app is hugely important for all of us and and one of the big things I really want to encourage everyone to do is download it and have it and use it for our own health.
Things have really moved far beyond the traditional GP contact and visit.
Nowadays people can access care in so many different ways.
There are many professionals in our team ranging from mental health professionals to social prescribers to musculoskeletal specialists who may be physios to dementia nurses to pharmacists as well as doctors and nurses.
Care navigators are a massively important part of the team.
They live in the local community, they know the local services, they can help direct us to the best service for us.
First time Pharmacy First.
It’s really impressive.
There’s seven basic clinical conditions that pharmacists can look after and it ranges anything from UTI to ear infections to sore throats, amongst other conditions as well.
We need to talk about those fears and we need to share those fears because actually there’s a lot of people who are nervous about it.
So it’s very important to us that nobody gets left behind.
Being able to self refer to all these services in the community and beyond, actually that’s really good.
And that makes us feel empowered and more in control of our health.
But actually, if you’re worried, if there’s any concerns, ask for help.
We can all help each other.
We can all learn and nobody, nobody gets left behind.
Local health and care teams are working hard to make it easier for you to access services at your GP surgery. This includes:
- Making it easier to get through on the phone
- Better initial assessment of your clinical needs (also known as ‘triage’), so that you get the right care for you, as quickly as possible
- Prioritising urgent needs first, so that people who need to be seen quickly get the right care regardless of when or how they contact their GP surgery.
There are several ways to reach your practice:
- Online (via the practice website, or NHS App)
- By phone, or;
- By visiting the surgery.
However you choose to get in touch with your practice, a dedicated team will respond based on your circumstances. They will help you with the next step of your care, tailored to your needs: it could be a face-to-face appointment, a phone or video consultation, or a simple message. These can be more flexible and often mean they can help you sooner.
Not all GP practices will have the same options for access. For example, some may have appointments available via the NHS App, while others may not. Some will require you to complete an online consultation (or online ‘triage’) ahead of offering an appointment, while others may not. This will all depend on how each individual practice chooses to manage their appointments.
Primary care access recovery initiatives
Some local GP surgeries have already made great progress to introduce new ways of working to deliver more appointments and provide better access. The NHS primary care access recovery plan, while nationally led, builds on work already happening locally across mid and south Essex to make it easier and more convenient for patients to get the help they need from primary care services. You can find out more about some of these initiatives below.