Practice News
Armed Forces veteran friendly accredited GP practice
Published on 17th Jul 2024
A message from the practice partners
'At Lensfield Medical Practice we have been triaging on the day appointments for around 8 years. We created this system because the number of pre-booked appointments meant that we no longer had the capacity to safely manage the number of urgent appointments required each day. Since then, demand has continued to increase. During the covid pandemic, we were advised by NHS England to implement total triage for all appointments. We looked carefully at various models and in July 2020, started to use accurx online patient triage.
We continue to ask patients to fill in the short form to be found on our website ‘appointments' These forms are reviewed by the duty team, usually within 1 hour of their submission. The team then decides on the appropriate next step, based on clinical need.
This could be a phonecall or a face to face appointment with a GP, pharmacist, minor illness nurse, practice nurse, paramedic or first contact physiotherapist. You will be notified of the outcome by text message or phone call within a few hours of your message being sent.
If you think that you are likely to require a urgent appointment on the same day that you are contacting us, we would ask that you submit the online form in the morning, as soon as possible after we open at 8am.
It is more difficult for us to manage urgent queries later in the day, and on occasion, when the amount of queries coming through exceeds the capacity of the staff in the practice to safely deal with them, we will pause online access to online queries for a period of time.
In order to safely monitor the online form responses, we turn off the ability to submit the form when the practice is closed, between 11.30am and 1.30pm daily and at 5pm.
If your query is either very simple, or not something that we are not the most appropriate service for, then you may receive a text message signposting you to another service such as a dentist or minor eye conditions service, or with a link to the appropriate medical advice online. In addition, we are utilising the ‘Pharmacy First’ service and you may be referred to your local pharmacy if your condition falls within the remit of this scheme ie UTI and sore throat.
We recognise that there will be patients for whom use of the internet is challenging and for those patients, the receptionist will fill in the form during the phonecall with the patient, and this will then be triaged in the same way by the duty doctor. Any patient who walk into the practice will also be asked to fill in the same form and will be triaged in the same way. We believe that equity of access to our services is important.
At Lensfield Medical Practice we have always believed that continuity of care is an important part of the Dr/patient relationship and we continue to strive to maintain a usual doctor system. If you are contacting us about an ongoing medical issue, we would usually try to book an appointment with a clinician who has been previously dealing with the problem. This may mean a longer wait for an appointment.
For a multitude of reasons, primary care is under a lot of pressure, and unfortunately, we can't see that things will change for the foreseeable future. We believe that patient triage is the only way that we can sustain a safe and accessible service for all of our patients based on clinical need. Please help us to help you most effectively.'
Published on 13th May 2024
Ways to consult a doctor or nurse Consultation via electronic methods
Telephone appointment with an appropriate clinician.
Face-to-face appointment with your GP or nursing team.
To contact us about a medical or administrative Click Here
You must be registered with this practice to use the service. Do not use this for urgent requests
It can help you see the right person for treatment, and could save you a trip to the practice if we can answer questions by phone, video call, or email. Answer a few short questions and we will get back to you as soon as we can, definitely within 2 working days.
*Not in the UK or Not Registered?
Please be aware.. We are unable to support you if you are outside of the UK - If you require urgent medical assistance please contact the emergency services or go to a hospital/treatment centre and ask for assistance
Sorry we are unable to support requests from patients not currently registered at LMP. Please phone NHS111 if you need help
Living outside / Moving out of the Lensfield Catchment Area
If you live outside or move out of the Lensfield Medical Practice catchment area we ask you to register with a GP in the locality of your new home. It is deemed to be clinically safer to be registered with a local GP as many of the support services would not be available.
We are currently unable to support out of area patients, thank you for your understanding.
Published on 13th May 2024
Access to Medical Records
We have enabled prospective access to medical records from March 2024. Patients are now able to view their records, test results and request medication on the NHS app.
Published on 13th May 2024
Partnership changes
Dr McDonald has been a Partner at Lensfield since January 2013. We are sorry to announce she will be leaving on 11 April 2024. Dr Liz Reynolds who was a GP trainee with us in 2018-2019 will be joining as a salaried GP and patients on Dr McDonald's list will transfer to Dr Reynolds. We thank Dr McDonald for her dedication, commitment and contribution to the growth and direction of Lensfield in the past 11 years. She will be missed by the team and I'm sure her patients. We wish her the very best in her future endeavours.
Published on 13th May 2024