Appointments, Home Visits and Out of Hours Calls

ROUTINE AND URGENT APPOINTMENTS
 
You can see any doctor at the practice - it doesn't have to be the doctor on your medical card.
 
Appointments can be made by either calling at the surgery or telephoning between the hours of 8.00am and 6.30pm.
 
RESPONDING TO PATIENT NEEDS
 
We have changed our appointment system in response to patient requests. We are now open longer hours each day, and the majority of doctor appointments can be booked up to four weeks in advance. The remainder are kept for urgent same-day needs. All appointments for other clinical staff can be prebooked.
 
Please note that appointments are for one person only. Separate appointments need to be made for each member of the family wanting to see the doctor.
 
Patients with truly urgent problems will always be offered an appointment the same day, usually the same morning or afternoon. We are, however, dependent upon your common sense and cooperation. Such calls will normally be triaged by a nurse trained and qualified in triage techniques - this means that the nurse will speak to you to discuss the matter and she will then either arrange an emergency appointment, or she will give telephone advice, or make some other suitable arrangement to meet your needs.
This is done to ensure that truly urgent needs are met quickly and appropriately, while less urgent matters will be dealt with in some other appropriate manner.
Please help us to keep the system working by making appropriate use of the emergency services we offer.
 
HOME VISITS
 
The doctors bag is not as well equipped as the surgery and in the time taken to do one home visit the doctor can see four people at the surgery. Please come to the surgery if at all possible.
 
If an urgent home visit is required, please try to telephone before 10.00am as calls received later than this may mean the doctor leaving patients to wait at the surgery.
 
These calls will normally be dealt with by the triage nurse - see above for an explanation of this. Any information given during triage will be treated in the strictest confidence but is needed by the nurse in order to judge which calls are most urgent.
 
OUT OF HOURS CALLS
 
After normal surgery hours our calls are handled by Bolton Out Of Hours Service, an emergency service run by Bolton Primary Care Trust. They are based at Waters Meeting Health Centre, Waters Meeting Road, Bolton, BL1 8TU telephone 01204 386655. You should phone the surgery first to ensure that we are closed, as Bolton Out Of Hours Service provides an emergency service only when we are closed.
 
Bolton Out Of Hours Service may ask you to come to Waters Meeting Health Centre to be seen if you are fit to travel, but please do not go there without first having agreed this with them by phone. It is not a walk-in service. They will visit you at home if you are not fit to travel.