You will notice that our receptionists are asking for a brief outline of your problem when you ring to book an appointment.
This is because we have introduced something called "Care Navigation". It means we have trained our receptionist as Patient Care Advisers in order to help identify the most appropriate place of care for our patients.
Through this specialist training, our practice team will be able to direct you to the most appropriate health clinician for your needs first.
Receptionists will never offer clinical advice or triage; this new way of working is about offering you the choice to see more appropriate professionals in the practice team or even somewhere else. If they can deal with the problem directly, it will often be quicker and means you may not need to see the GP at all.
By working this way, it helps to free up time for GP's to care for patients with complex or serious health conditions that can only be managed by the GP. More importantly though, it means people are seen first by the clinician that is best placed to manage their clinical concerns.
Care Navigation - who do you need to see?