Rapid Health – Our New Smart Triage Booking System
We are introducing Rapid Health, our new online triage and consultation tool, to help make accessing care easier and ensure patients are seen by the right clinician at the right time.
Click here to book your appointment
- Adult Medical Request to book an appointment
- Child Request (under 16’s) – Parents or Guardians can submit an appointment request. These will be manually reviewed by the duty clinician and the outcome communicated to the parent/guardian.
- Questions and Admin – For administration requests such as Sick Notes, medication enquiries, update personal information or pharmacy nomination etc.
Please note, you cannot use Rapid Health to arrange an appointment if you require:-
- A Home Visit: Please try and call before 10:30am. Home visits are only available if you are genuinely housebound or clinically unable to travel
- An interpreter or British Sign Language (BSL) services
- Nursing appointments (e.g. blood tests, cervical screening, wound care, vaccinations and injections)
- NHS Health Checks and Long-Term Condition annual reviews (e.g. Diabetes, Hypertension, Respiratory)
- Medication reviews
- Post-natal appointments and baby checks
- Contraceptive procedures (implants and coils)
- Minor operations and steroid injections
- Follow up appointments requested by a clinician
- Please contact the practice to discuss arranging the above appointment.
Quick Access Guide to Rapid Health
Please note this is not a replica of our website but a guide on how to use Rapid Health
FAQ’s
What are the appointment categories available?
Rapid Health manages requests into four categories based on urgency:
Red – same day
Appointments may be with GPs, Advanced Clinical Practitioners, Advanced Nurse Practitioners, Practice Nurses, Clinical Pharmacists, MSK Specialists, or Additional Capacity Hub. Some cases may be signposted to alternative services such as a community pharmacy.
Contact us online
You can contact a doctor, nurse or other healthcare professional online.
Urgent appointments
Once all our appointments are booked we offer a limited number of urgent phone appointments where a GP or a nurse will call you to assess what the problem is and try and resolve it over the phone. These are for urgent issues that cannot wait for a normal routine appointment or until the following day.
If the GP wishes to see you following an urgent phone call this may be at either Macklin Street, or Park Farm Surgery, dependent on where the on call GP is based that day. We try very hard to satisfy patient demand however once we have no appointments or phone slots left we may refer you to other healthcare providers such as the walk in centre. All of our patients can be seen at either surgery if an appointment is available.
To request a routine appointment in advance during opening times:
Patients not attending appointments
Most patients know that if they book an appointment with us and are unable to attend, that they should contact the surgery and cancel that appointment so we can offer that slot to another patient who needs to be seen. Unfortunately we have some patients who do not cancel a booked appointment and this can add up to as many as 400 appointments a month.
Please be advised if you do not cancel a booked appointment we cannot offer that appointment to another patient. Patients who repeatedly do not cancel booked appointments will be removed from our practice list and will need to register with another doctors surgery.
Cancelling or changing an appointment
To cancel your appointment:
- use your NHS account (through the NHS website or NHS App)
- use the GP online system: SystmOnline
- phone us on Macklin Street Surgery 01332 340381 or Park Farm Surgery 01332 551021 during opening times
If you need help when we are closed
If you need medical help now, use NHS 111 online or call 111.
NHS 111 online is for people aged 5 and over. Call 111 if you need help for a child under 5.
Call 999 in a medical or mental health emergency. This is when someone is seriously ill or injured and their life is at risk.
If you need help with your appointment
Please tell us:
- if there’s a specific doctor, nurse or other health professional you would prefer to respond
- if you would prefer to consult with the doctor or nurse by phone, face-to-face, by video call or by text or email
- if you need an interpreter
- if you have any other access or communication needs
Home visits
When a visit is recommended
We believe home visiting makes clinical sense and is the best way of giving a medical opinion in cases involving:
- the terminally ill
- the truly housebound for whom travel to the surgery by car would cause a deterioration in their medical condition or unacceptable discomfort
After an initial assessment over the phone a seriously ill patient may be helped by a GP’s attendance. However the GP may advise the patient, or person with the patient, to ring 999 to receive the appropriate immediate care.
Examples of such situations are:
- heart attack
- severe shortness of breath
- severe haemorrhage
When a visit is not appropriate
In most of the following cases, to visit would not be an appropriate use of a GP’s time:
- common symptoms of childhood illness
- fevers
- cold
- cough
- earache
- headache
- diarrhoea/vomiting
- most cases of abdominal pain
These patients are usually well enough to travel by car. It is not necessarily harmful to take a child with a fever outside. These children may not be fit to travel by bus or to walk, but car transport may be available from friends, relatives or taxi firms. It is not a doctor’s responsibility to arrange such transport.
Adults with common problems (such as cough, sore throat, influenza, back pain and abdominal pain) are also readily transportable by car to a doctor’s premises.
Common problems in the elderly (such as mobility problems, joint pain and general malaise) would also best be treated by consultation at a doctor’s premises.