If you require urgent medical attention please call 999 or 111 for the Out of Hours Service when the surgery is closed. Please call the surgery on 01383 731721at 8am to arrange any GP appointments, your request will be triaged by a clinician on the day. Please be prepared to give the receptionist a brief description of your problem so it can be dealt with by the most appropriate healthcare professional. You must be available to take either a telephone call or come into the surgery on the day you call. Once the surgery has reached maximum capacity you may be asked to call back the next day at 8am. Hospital Hill Surgery is not an emergency service.
Patient Communication – January 2025
For quite some time, the surgery has been operating a reduced service due to significant challenges in recruiting staff, ongoing GP shortages, and limited resources. As a practice, we fully understand that many of our patients are frustrated with the lack of routine bookable GP appointments. We are also aware of the comments on social media where frustrations are increasingly being directed toward our practice team on a daily basis.
We would like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that our practice operates a zero-tolerance policy. Any patient found to be verbally abusive towards a member of our team will be removed from our list with immediate effect. Our team members are working incredibly hard to provide the best possible healthcare within the resources available to us, and they deserve to be treated with respect and understanding.
We assure you that this is not how we wish to run our services. Like you, we would like nothing more than to return to offering routine, bookable GP appointments. However, with our current staffing levels, we cannot do this safely. On a regular basis, through no fault of our own, we find ourselves running the practice with only two GPs and two Advanced Nurse Practitioners (ANPs) to care for a patient list size of over 8,700 patients. This means we must prioritise appointments for those with urgent medical needs.
Our Advanced Nurse Practitioners, who are highly skilled in managing minor illnesses, and play a crucial role in supporting patient care. If deemed appropriate after assessment, you may be allocated an appointment with an ANP instead of a GP. This ensures we maximise the care we can provide while managing our limited capacity.
We recognise how difficult it is to access GP appointments. As healthcare providers, we are also patients ourselves and appreciate the frustrations. The British Medical Association (BMA) introduced safe working guidance for GPs in 2023, highlighting the increased workloads, insufficient resources, and growing concerns about GP burnout. These guidelines emphasise the need for sustainable working practices to ensure patient safety and the well-being of healthcare professionals.
Additionally, longer waiting times in hospitals mean that many patients are left with no option but to return to their GP practice while awaiting treatment in secondary care. This further increases the demand for appointments, particularly as we care for an aging population and patients with increasingly complex medical needs.
Recently, the practice conducted an audit to review how best to manage our appointment booking system. Patient feedback indicated a preference for our on-the-day booking system. While we know this approach does not suit everyone, we are making small changes to accommodate patient needs. As part of this, we have begun trialling a small number of pre-bookable appointments where possible, and this will be reviewed on a regular basis.
Some patients have suggested the introduction of online consultation forms. The practice previously trialled this system in 2020. Unfortunately, the feedback at the time was largely negative, citing issues such as difficulty accessing the software, time-consuming processes, and reliability concerns. Given these challenges, we decided not to continue with this system.
We want to thank all our patients for their continued patience and understanding during these challenging times. Our priority remains to deliver safe and effective care to all those who need it most, and we are continually working to improve where possible.
Many thanks,
Hospital Hill Surgery
What is NHS Pharmacy First Scotland?
- NHS Pharmacy First Scotland is an NHS service provided by your local community pharmacy (a pharmacy with a contract to provide NHS prescriptions and services)
- If you have a minor illness, a pharmacy is the first place you should go for advice.
- You do not usually need an appointment and you can go to any pharmacy.
- Your pharmacist can give you advice for a minor illness, and medicine if they think you need it.
