Covid-19 Update 24/03

Posted on March 24th, 2020

Good Afternoon
We hope everyone is staying safe and adhering to social distancing. Please do not go out unless absolutely necessary.

With regards to the issue of “Rescue Packs” as promised we have the following statement from our GP’s…”Rescue packs are aimed to be used by COPD patients at risk of an exacerbation – we will aim to continue this practice. Otherwise, please dont contact your GP practice for a rescue pack if you have not had one previously. If you feel you have symptoms of COVID-19, please visit https://111.nhs.uk/covid-19 , if your symptoms are life threatening please call 999″ We have received so many requests for these packs so we felt we should clarify this.

The same applies to prescriptions, as mentioned yesterday we will continue to issue these in the usual way as best we can, isolating does not mean you need to request 3 months worth of medication at once, simply just continue to order monthly as you have been. Inhalers continue to be requested even for people who have not had one for years, this is not good practice so we would ask you to think about this, the inhaler you had years ago may no longer be suitable for you anymore so we need to continue to prescribe in the normal manner and if you feel its absolutely necessary to have one an appointment with the clinician will be required. We completely understand this is new to everyone and very difficult but please try not to panic order.

Emails to the surgery continue to flood in unfortunately, so just a gentle reminder, the email feature was a decision we made in order to make things as easy as possible for patients at this difficult time. Unfortunately some patients are abusing the facility and we are struggling to cope with the amount of work it is generating. Sadly from today, it should only be used to order your prescriptions or cancel your telephone appointment. As much as we would love to reply to everyones prescription request, it just isn’t possible so if you do request your prescription via email don’t follow up with a further email to see if we have received it, just wait the 48 working hours and collect from your pharmacy. Any other queries via email will no longer be dealt with and you will receive a generic reply asking you to call the surgery. Due to the volume we just cant continue with it.

Telephone calls to the surgery are also on the increase, worryingly it would seem everyone is continuing their usual routines, please spare a thought for the staff having to put themselves at risk and come into work everyday. We should not be receiving calls about non urgent things, this is a pandemic and the staff are working flat out so we can continue to deliver a service to the ACUTELY ILL. We have very limited staff in the surgery and if you don’t help us by only contacting for URGENT queries it will cause delays to prescriptions and anything else that requires the GP’s attention. We cannot stress this enough to patients, if it is not urgent then please refrain from contacting us at this extremely difficult time. We want to be able to help as many as possible for as long as possible.

ALL weekend appointments are automatically cancelled for the next 3 weeks, we have tried to contact as many patients as possible but due to the pressures of emails, telephone calls, prescriptions and staff shortages we have not been able to do this, so we ask for your help to spread the word not to turn up to appointments.

We will continue to update you as regularly as possible and hopefully next time the news will be more positive, we just feel the need to express in this communication the seriousness of the pandemic and the increasing workload generated by patients continuing to contact us regarding routine things. If everyone could just offer us a little bit of support with this, it would make a huge difference. We thank you once again for your understanding and for those of you who have sent your best wishes to the surgery staff we really appreciate it.

Willaston Surgery