Appointments

How to Request an Appointment

You can make an appointment in the following ways:

The surgery has a new service that will help you to get speedy advice about a health problem. Our new service offers on the day telephone consultations and face to face consultations if deemed appropriate by the doctor and patient. This service is for urgent and non-urgent problems.

How to Access our Service

  • Ring our main reception number on 01638 666887 and advise our reception team you need an appointment with a doctor.
  • Our receptionist will take some basic contact information from you. If you have difficulty receiving a call, you can tell our receptionist the best time and number for a call-back.
  • Our receptionist will also ask for a brief description of your reason for requesting an appointment. It is helpful if you can provide this information as it allows our doctors to prioritise their calls based on clinical need.
  • If you prefer to speak to a particular doctor, please ring between 08:00 and 10:00. After this time most doctors are seeing patients face to face and calls are then taken by our daily on-call doctor/s only.
  • If you ring after 14:00 and your call is not urgent, you may be asked to call back the following morning. This is because later in the day our doctors are still busy seeing patients booked in from earlier in the day and undertaking review clinics for patients with long-term conditions.
  • If you walk into the surgery to be seen instead of ringing, it is unlikely you will be seen any quicker, unless it is an emergency. You may still receive a telephone call back from the doctor and given a time to attend the practice if required. It is unlikely this will be immediately and it is, therefore, better if you ring us first before attending the practice.
  • Our reception team are now able to book some appointments direct with the nursing team. Let our reception team know the reason for your call and if this is the case, you will be given an appointment time to attend the nurse clinic.
  • Remember, our early morning telephone consultations may be booked online if you are registered for this service.

Why change our appointment system?

By offering telephone and face to face consultations, we are able to offer our patients a more flexible service that meets the needs of a whole range of people, including those that have difficulty accessing our services during normal working hours.

Our service mainly provides an on the day consultation which is much more acceptable than having to wait for a period of time under the traditional pre-bookable system.

This also prevents the practice from having large numbers of DNA’s (did not attends) where patients booked appointments in advance and did not let us know when they were not attending. This, therefore, makes every appointment count.

If you would like to speak to a doctor of your choice. Please see our Doctors Rota, which shows their normal working days. Please be aware that this is just a general guide as doctors may be away from the practice for personal or work reasons.

Online Services

We are able to offer our patients the opportunity to pre-book a telephone appointment with a GP online with SystmOnline. The appointments available will be for a telephone call-back from the GP only, similar to if you had called in the surgery that morning and requested an appointment over the telephone.

You will need to use our Register for our Online Services form or come into the surgery and ask a member of our reception team for log-on details to access online services unless you have previously registered for online appointments or online prescription requesting. You will be given a welcome letter and instructions on how to register.

Once you have registered, you will be able to log in to the SystmOnline patient access screen and pre-book a telephone consultation with a GP. You will also be able to order your repeat prescriptions from the same screen if required.

The slots available for pre-booking will be at 00:01, 00:02 or 00:03 hours, This is not when you will receive your call back. The GP will begin calling patients booked in for a telephone call from 08:00 onwards.

Extra GP Appointments

The Suffolk GP+ service operates in Ipswich, Felixstowe, Wickham Market, Stowmarket, Bury St Edmunds, Sudbury and Mildenhall and enables you to book appointments in the evenings and on Saturdays.

You can book an appointment with a GP or nurse practitioner in advance through your GP practice or NHS 111. The service will be operating in some locations on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day.

Out of Hours Service

Between 18:30 and 08:00 Monday to Friday and all day at weekends and on Bank Holidays your call will be redirected to the NHS 111 service.

Emergencies

In a genuine emergency, you should call 999. Chest pains and/or shortness of breath constitute as an emergency.

Touch Screen Checking-In System

We have a touch-screen checking-in system in the porch to enable patients to quickly book in on arrival without having to queue so if you have no queries but simply want to book in, bypass the queue by entering your month of birth and then day and the screen should confirm your appointment. All you have to do then is take a seat and wait to be called.

Text Message Reminders

You can register to receive information by text message on your phone regarding appointments and health care.

If you wish to register for this messaging service, please use our Ask the Practice a Question form.

How to Cancel an Appointment

If you cannot attend an appointment for any reason please inform us as soon as possible in order for us to give the slot to someone else.

To cancel, you can: