Request Online Assistance

Online Assistance

The easiest way to request assistance is via the online “Engage Consult” system, click the link below to contact us. 

Please note that this is a limited first come first served service that operates between the hours of:
06:00 – 11:00 Mon-Fri.

If you find that this service has been fully booked on your chosen day, please telephone the surgery, or if your query is administrative in nature, email the surgery directly and a member of the team will respond to you as soon as possible.

 

Request Online Assistance

Options once logged into Engage Consult:

Request Help From Surgery for general medical issues

Submit an Admin Query for:
Med3 Fit Note, prescriptions, letter requests, referral updates, change of address/contact details, test results, routine appointments such as cervical smears or child immunisations.

Telephone Appointments

To make an appointment please call the telephone appointment line on:

Churchwood Practice: 01424 853999

Hastings Old Town Surgery: 01424 452800

Warrior Square Surgery: 01424 434151

To help us to better manage our appointments, we are implementing a Clinical Triage system. Anyone calling the surgery for an appointment will be asked by a member of our trained receptionist team for some details about their call. The details of your call will be shared with the GP carrying out the Clinical Triage and will be used to help deal with your issue in the best possible way.  As NHS employees, all staff working in the surgery are bound by a duty of confidentiality and will only provide this information to the GP.

The GP will review the information you have given to the receptionist and depending upon the reason for your call will either call you back / send you a text message/book you an appointment or arrange/organise what is most appropriate to meet your needs. For example, if your issue is that you require a medication, the GP will organise a prescription on your behalf. The GP may also organise for you to have an appointment with a member of the clinical team which may be a GP, an Advanced Nurse Practitioner, a Paramedic Practitioner, a Clinical Pharmacist or a Physiotherapist depending on your issue.

Please tell the receptionist if you work away, are a shift worker, or a carer as we will try to offer you a suitable appointment. In some circumstances, if you work away, it is better for you to visit a local walk-in centre for urgent medical needs and to ask us for a review if you wish to do so afterwards.

We will offer you the best-suited clinician to meet your needs, however, if you would like to see a specific clinician, you may have to wait longer for this type of appointment to be arranged.

Our Triage service operates between 08:30 – 12:00 Monday-Friday.

Please remember the telephone lines are very busy between 08:00 and 10:00 each day. Please make use of our online services as much as possible, you may find this faster and more efficient than contacting us via telephone, thank you.

Appointment considerations

During the appointment

  • Only one patient per appointment slot can be seen, patients are asked to book individual slots for each family member who needs to be seen.
  • If you have multiple problems, your GP may ask you to make another appointment in order for them to have time in which to deal with these.

Training Practice

As you may be aware, we are a training practice, which means that we assist in the process of training and developing new GP’s. These particular colleagues are already qualified doctors, however, they are training to specialise in becoming a GP. Please inform our receptionists at the time of booking if you would prefer not to have an appointment with our qualified doctors in training.

Our colleagues are continuously developing and there may be occasions whereby they are undertaking training as part of their practice under close supervision of a fully qualified supervising clinician.  Should you not wish for this, please advise our reception team, thank you.

Late Arrivals

If you are under 5 minutes late the clinician will try and see you. If you are between 5 – 10 minutes late they will try and fit you in between other patients, in certain circumstances they may only be able to see you right at the end of their surgery to avoid making other patients who were on time, having to wait. They may also request that you make another appointment.

Cancellations

If you cannot attend an appointment for any reason, please inform us at least 2 hours before your appointment time in order for us to offer the slot to another patient. You can do this via:

  • Clicking the cancellation link in your SMS appointment reminder
  • Emailing the practice: sxicb-esx.hastingsoldtownsurgery@nhs.net
  • Telephone

Referrals to secondary care services

It is the Government’s priority in England to:

  • Provide patients with an offer of choice when it has been decided they need a first consultant out patient appointment
  • When it is decided with your GP to refer you to a specialist, speak with your doctor about what is best for you.
  • Please ensure that you attend your Secondary Care appointments. If you fail to attend your appointment you will be removed from the waiting list and will need to attend the practice to request a new referral, this is both costly to the practice and it is not a good use of our GPs’ time.

Home visits

Policy:

  • Home visits are reserved for patients who are genuinely housebound and who do not leave the house for any reason.  Including those in residential and nursing homes.
  • We will visit only if the patient’s clinical condition prevents them from traveling to the surgery and they are deemed to have a medical condition that necessitates an urgent medical opinion.
  • Age is not a criterion for a home visit, the criteria applies to both older and younger people.
  • Home visits will not be undertaken for social / transport reasons.
  •  The clinician may refuse to visit the patient and offer an urgent appointment at the surgery if he/she feels that is more appropriate.

The surgery will follow these guidelines:

Please dial 999 in case of a genuine life-threatening emergency. For life-threatening emergencies, requesting a visit from a GP can delay life-saving treatment.

Examples of such situations are:


Patients are therefore advised to ring the emergency services directly.

GP is likely to visit for these conditions:

GP home visiting makes clinical sense and is the best way of giving a medical opinion in cases involving:

  • The terminally ill
  • The truly bed-bound patient, for whom travel to premises by car would cause deterioration to their medical condition or unacceptable discomfort.


GP MAY visit for these conditions:

  • Those who are not usually bed-bound but have a clinical condition that prevents them from being ambulatory.


GP will NOT usually visit for these conditions and circumstances and it is expected that the patient will attend the surgery to be seen.

  • Common symptoms of childhood fevers, cold, cough, earache, headache, diarrhoea /vomiting and most cases of abdominal pain. These patients are usually well enough to travel by car. It is not harmful to take a child with a fever outside. These children may not be fit to travel by bus or walk, but car transport is available from friends, relatives or taxi firms.
  • Adults with common problems, such as a cough, sore throat, influenza, back pain and abdominal pain, are also readily transportable by car to the surgery premises.
  • Common problems in the elderly, such as poor mobility, joint pain and general malaise, would also best be treated by consultation at the surgery premises where the facilities are available for full examination and investigations. The exception to this would be the truly bed-bound patient.

PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING:

  • The practice is not responsible for arranging transport to the surgery.
  • We will not visit for convenience.
  • Wherever possible patients requiring a consultation with a GP will be asked to attend the surgery.
  • The surgery has the correct facilities for undertaking examinations.
  • In the surgery the GP undertaking the consultation has access to the full clinical record and access to support services such as Practice Nurses and therefore a consultation at the practice is better quality with regard to governance issues.
  • Home visits are not an efficient or effective use of  pressurised GP time.
  • If you request a home visit, you may initially receive a telephone consultation from the Doctor or Emergency Care Practitioner, who will discuss your symptoms with you.  You may be asked to attend the surgery as a result of this consultation if clinically appropriate. The Doctor will decide on the most suitable place and time for your condition to be assessed.

© Hastings & Rother Healthcare 2023

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