Urgent ‘on the day’ Care – New System from Monday 24th October 2022

At Watership Down Health, we strive to deliver excellent, patient centred care. We are continually adapting to uphold our standards and ethos. No one could have predicted the impact of Covid-19 on our country and with that has come enormous strain and demand on NHS services in primary and secondary care across the country.

To ensure we maintain the safety of the service we provide we need to make small changes to how we run our ‘on the day urgent care”.

If you feel your problem is urgent and cannot wait for a routine appointment, please call before 11:30 (on a Monday) or 12:00 (Tuesday to Friday) to be triaged by lunch time and 14:00 and before 17:30 to be triaged by the time the surgery closes. During these times you will be placed on a call back list where you will be triaged by our urgent care team. This will allow us to ensure that we can see those most vulnerable and those with immediate health needs on the same day. If we can deal with urgent problems more effectively it allows more routine appointments to be available and a reduction in our waiting times.

Our reception team and the website are on hand throughout the day to address your health queries. When an appointment is needed, we endeavour to arrange this with the most appropriate member of staff within the next 2 – 4 weeks. This may be with a doctor, nurse, musculoskeletal practitioner, mental health advisor or pharmacist. The appointment may be face to face, by video or by telephone. The Reception Team are the mainstay of our service provision, they are working exceptionally hard to deal with the growing number of queries and they do so with kindness. Please remember they have your best interests at heart, as we all do.

We fully understand the frustrations of the public when you wait for an appointment, but while we continue to contend with the increased demand and staff shortages set on us by Covid-19, please be mindful that we are doing everything we can to ensure your care is the very best it can be.

Thank you from:

Dr J Lindsay, Dr S Still, Dr N Decker, Dr C Chilcott, Dr K Pollard and Dr K Hughes
GP Partners, Watership Down Health