Opening Hours Survey

At East Quay we believe every patient should have a personal GP. We also believe that services should be accessible and have always tried to ensure that we offer flexible appointment times for patients who may need early morning or early evening appointments. Our current opening hours are every weekday from 8am to 6.30pm and we want to offer availability beyond this where it is needed.

It is important for good patient care that the additional hours we offer support a personal list system. Therefore every week each doctor should have some availability outside of current hours. This means that if you are unable to attend in existing surgery hours for a routine appointment, then you shouldn’t usually have to wait more than a week to see your own GP (except when your GP is on leave or already fully booked).

We also want to be able to offer other practice services during the new hours. It is important that patients with long term conditions or who need routine screening but cannot attend during normal hours can see a nurse. For blood tests and other screening it is important for accuracy that the samples are delivered to the laboratory within 24 hours.

Violence and aggression towards GPs and practice staff is increasing. We do not want to expose our GPs and practice staff to the risk of lone working and therefore want a number of GPs to offer the new hours at the same time.

For all of these reasons we feel that to provide you with the best service possible we should opening longer in the evenings .The new hours will be for patients booked an appointment about a routine problem and who cannot attend during normal surgery hours. Appointments will be booked in advance and all urgent problems will continue to be dealt with by the out of hours service.

It is important to us that we ask you your opinion on opening hours. We are currently undertaking survey of 5% of patient chosen at random. If you recieve a survey, please complete and return it.