What hasn’t changed

Chancery Lane Surgery is and has been, throughout the Covid19 pandemic, open for your health and medical needs. Our priority is to continue to maintain a safe environment for patients and staff. Contrary to some regrettable misconceptions, please be assured that we are open for your health needs. The way you access our services has changed in line with NHSE and government guidance.

What has changed?

The pandemic has resulted in major changes in the way General Practice operates and functions. We have been working hard under NHSE and PHE guidance to provide remote triage and consultations but still opened our doors during the pandemic.

Patients with long-term conditions will have their reviews mostly conducted either via telephone or video consultation where applicable. Where there is a clinical need, they will be invited for a face-to-face review.

Phlebotomy appointments continue to run but are on a strictly pre-booked basis.

Baby check clinics continue to run, as do our immunisation clinics.

*Vaccinations remain an important part of healthcare and disease prevention and we encourage all our patients to attend their scheduled immunisations, and not to postpone them – if you have any concerns about having your (or your child’s) immunisations, please get in touch for a chat and discussion with our friendly nurses and GPs*

Remote triage and consultations – telephone, video, online

In line with NHSE guidance, we have been operating a remote triage first service, via a variety of ways including online eConsult, telephone consultations and video consultations where applicable. However, as the numbers of vaccinations have increased, we are trying to increase face to face appointments in the safest way possible to continue to protect patients and staff.

Many conditions can be managed safely remotely, but a Clinician will still book you in for a face-to-face review if this is clinically indicated to help with the management of your problem.

Why can’t I just book a face-to-face appointment whenever I want?

This new way of working is not to deny you a face-to-face appointment – it is to ensure that your problem is dealt with safely, correctly and as swiftly as possible by the correct team member, the first-time round.

It is also to ensure that we adhere to social distancing regulations, which restrict the number of people we can accommodate in the waiting room at any one time.

It is definitely not about reducing our team’s workload – we have found that we are offering far more appointments than we used to, because there is now more telephone, video, and eConsult appointments in a working day, so in fact we have been working harder than we did before the pandemic.

Telephone and remote consultations are also more challenging and stressful for our Team, due to the lack of non-verbal cues when seeing a patient face to face. This is why it may actually take longer to consult someone remotely compared to a traditional face to face consultation.

We will continue to work hard to make this new way of working as effective as possible for you. Most importantly, it minimises any potential Covid19 risk to you, your family and carers, and our staff by ensuring that you are asked to attend the surgery only when it is clinically appropriate.

Thank you!

We know that changes are never easy, so the team thanks you for your cooperation and understanding, by NOT attending, unless you have a pre-booked face to face appointment arranged by our clinical team and ARRS team.

111 is the NHS non-emergency number. It’s fast, easy and free. Call 111 and speak to a highly trained adviser, supported by healthcare professionals. They will ask you a series of questions to assess your symptoms and immediately direct you to the best medical care for you.

NHS 111 is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Calls are free from landlines and mobile phones.

In case of a life-threatening emergency, please dial 999