How do I make an appointment?
mobile
Digital Front Door
Phone
0151 317 8550
Computer
Digital front door
What type of appointments are available?
Online Consult
Online consult with a reply by text or telephone
face to Face Consult
Anything which you feel would need the doctor to examine you
Telephone Consult
Use your phone to speak with your doctor remotely
Video Consult
Use your mobile or tablet to see and speak with your doctor remotely
How do I use the Digital front door?
Routine Consultations
Routine consultations are available Monday to Friday. All of our Doctors do work outside of the practise and so are not in the building or consulting every day. Our Reception team will always aim to offer you an appointment with the clinician of your choice if they are available.
We offer appointments which are available to book up to 28 days in advance, as well as appointments which are “book on the day”. We offer face to face consultations, as well as telephone consultations. Telephone appointments are often more suitable, if your issue does not require an examination. If however, the doctor feels they still need to see you, they will arrange this with you when they speak to you.
Our preferred way for patients to book an appointment is through our digital front door on our homepage. This allows us to take some information about the reason for the consultation and book you in with the most appropriate member of staff. Our digital front door opens at 06:30AM so this is also appropriate for on the day appointment requests and allows patient to beat the 8AM rush when our telephone lines open. You can book appointments in person at Reception however because of confidentiality reasons this is not preferred.
Urgent Appointments
If there are no appointments available on the day, our receptionists will ask you if you feel your health problem is urgent or an emergency. They will ask you this so we can genuinely assess whether you can wait till the next routine appointment. We hold back a small number of appointment for emergencies.
Home Visits
Urgent home visit requests must be made by telephone and received by 12:00. A doctor will normally ring you prior to the visit.
Home visits are available for patients who are registered with the practice as being housebound. If you are able to leave the house for any reason such as for hospital appointments we would expect you to attend the practice.
Home visits will not be undertaken for social/transport reasons.
Delays/Cancellation
Sometimes, patients’ needs are greater and more complex so take longer. Unfortunately, this means doctors can run late and your appointment is delayed. The self check in system will usually tell you whether there is any delay and receptionists will frequently announce any problems, but if you are kept waiting longer than 10 minutes and are not sure why then please do speak to the receptionist.
If you will not be able to attend your appointment, we ask that you let us know so that we can offer it to someone else
Text Reminder Service
We now have an SMS appointment reminder service. If you have given us permission and your mobile phone number, you will receive a text message 24 hours before your appointment. It is important that the mobile phone number you give us is yours only and not a shared mobile for family use. This is to avoid the text reminder being seen by someone other than the patient.
