During the pandemic life has been difficult for all of us, we have had to change our lives, manage pain, illness, suffering and in some cases the death of people close to us. If people you care about have died during the pandemic, please accept my deepest condolences.

I want to reassure you that the team at your GP practice continue to be here for you and your family. As you will be aware, we have had to make changes to the way we work to be able to support you and keep you safe to ensure we can continue to provide services for you and your family.

I would like to take the opportunity to clarify how you can contact us and how we can help and support you.

How You Can Contact Us

There are several ways you can contact the practice; these are listed in a table accompanying this letter so that you can keep it handy for reference. There’s also useful information on how you can access wider support and contact details for other healthcare organisations and services, including telephone numbers for local NHS organisations in case you need to follow up a referral – the practice doesn’t have any access to the appointments of other organisations.  

At the practice we (as well as all other GP practices) are experiencing a high demand for our services, and we are taking all the actions we can to provide you with the support that you need. In order to do that we need to work together with you.

I appreciate that the phone lines are very busy and not being able to get through to us can be very frustrating. We are reviewing our phone services to see what we can do to improve them so that you don’t have these problems. These improvements may take some time to implement, so thank you for your patience as they take place.

How We Are Seeing Patients

Despite the Government’s  Plan B restrictions lifting on 27 Jan, COVID–19 still remains a significant concern and taking appropriate steps to reduce the risk of infection within the practice still governs how we can use the building. We need to ensure waiting rooms do not become crowded and carry out cleaning between patient consultations. For these reasons, it is not possible for practices to see as many people in person as before the pandemic. We ask anyone visiting the surgery to please wear a face-mask.

The arrangements that we do have in place for consultations with you are:

• telephone consultation
• video consultation
• In person, face to face consultation

We are working hard to make sure that you get the same high standard of care whatever type of consultation you have with us. Telephone and video consultations could be safer, quicker and more convenient for you. If during a telephone or video consultation, there is a decision that it is necessary to see you in person then an appointment will be made for you to come to the practice.

Your consultation will be made with the professional who can best deal with your query. We rely on the expertise of our colleagues who are: nurses, paramedics, pharmacists, healthcare assistants, physiotherapists and doctors. This enables us to have a large volume of appointments available for people each day and ensures that you get the right care from the right professional.

Our reception staff are trained to sign post you to the right health care professional for your need as efficiently as possible and will ask for the reason you are contacting the surgery. We understand you may feel reluctant to share personal medical information, but please be assured our reception staff are there to help and your information will be treated in the strictest confidence.

Routine services

The successful roll out of the booster programme means that our practice can now resume routine appointments after some of these were paused in mid-December to divert resources to delivering more vaccinations during the Omicron wave. We are now urging patients who have held off contacting their practice with more routine issues over recent weeks, and those who are due to have health checks, to come forward. Support for patients with urgent health concerns and for clinically vulnerable patients or for people with an ongoing health condition has continued throughout. We continue to be here for you. Please don’t hesitate in contacting us.

How To Get Involved

If you would like to become more involved in how the practice works, I would like to invite you to become part of our Patient Participation Group (PPG). This is a group of patients, carers and practice staff who meet to discuss practice issues and patient experience in order to help improve the service. If you would like to become part of the group or have a discussion with one of the members please contact the Practice Manager who can arrange this.

If you do have any comments or feedback you would like to share you can also do this by contacting our Practice Manager Ann Sisson. We’re always looking for ways to improve our services, and if something has not met your expectations or you’d like to share a positive experience, we would like to hear about it.

Thank you very much for your time. I am confident that as a team of patients and professionals we can continue to look after one another and ensure that the services you need are available for you.

Kind regards

Dr. Jenni Lindford

Senior Partner

You can contact Crocus Medical Practice in the following ways

Other ways to get medical support and advice