Tel: 02074875244
Out of Hours: 111
You and Your General Practice
You and your general practice (YYGP) has been developed to help patients understand what to expect from their general practice and how they can get the best from their GP team. YYGP also enables patient to provide feedback or raise concerns with their GP Practice, Healthwatch or the integrated care board (ICB). The YYGP document published by NHS England can be found here.
Improving Access:
Patient’s want to be able to access care when they need it and we understand that.
Last year (25/26) we worked with other local GP practices (West End & Marylebone PCN) to create a plan that improved access for our local patients to GP practice services.
The plan was submitted to the local ICB (Integrated Care Board) and it was approved in June 2025. Our practice/s then worked through the year on implementing that plan to improve access.
In summary we agreed to:
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Answer 90% of calls within 10 minutes by March 2026.
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Throughout 2025/26 monthly clinical time audits and appointment mapping reviews June 2025 – Jan 2026
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90% of e-consultations (Patchs) responded to by next working day by January 2026
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2% of patient list flagged for continuity of care by December 2025
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10% increase in NHS App registrations by March 2026
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One annual patient survey and one engagement events
Our approach to the agreed actions always considered our patient demographic, challenges and prevalence’s.
How did we do?
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Collectively our PCN practices answered 97 % calls within 10 minutes
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Over 90% of e-consultations (Patchs) were responded to by the next working day
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Our PCN identified 1104 patients as benefitting from continuity of care (over 2%) and this being appropriately flagged in their medical record. To ensure that this approach to continuity was effective an audit was carried out in Jan 2026 to review whether this cohort of patients were in fact receiving continuity of care. The PCN organised a learning event to discuss the audit, outcomes and learning, the event was attended by all practices.
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69% of patients locally had downloaded the NHS app by March 2026
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The PCN received 2041 responses to the patient engagement survey (over 4% of population). This gave the PCN valuable feedback to inform their next steps in improving access for the local population. The PCN also held two engagements events ‘Coffee with a Copper’ event at Pheonix Garden and a more targeted event with the Chinese Welfare Trust at Charing Cross Library.
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The PCN carried out monthly audits over a seven month period with the focus being on the appropriate use of GP appointments. The PCN organised a learning event where the outcome of the audit was reviewed collectively by PCN practices.
The access approach in 26/27:
Our practice and PCN were able to draw useful insights from the work completed in 25/26 and we want to build on it.
1) We will continue to answer a minimum of 90% telephone calls within 10 minutes
2) We will carefully monitor appointments made available to our NHS111 colleagues and ensure there is adequate availability using our practice list size as a guide.
3) We will provide staff (NHS ambassadors) to help patients download and use the NHS app. To align with this we will continue to increase the number of patients at our practice registered with the NHS app.
4) Practices within the network with identify more patients that would benefit from continuity of care (minimum 3% of registered list size). We will also carry out an audit on a sample of this cohort of patients (20%) to see if the continuity approach above if effective.
5) We will continue to be transparent with our patients on the work we plan to do on access.
6) In 26/27 we will run a patient survey so that we can continuously improve our services in line with access demands. In WEM PCN we were able to see patients under 25 years were the least represented cohort of patients and so we will design our survey and approach with this in mind. Patients in the PCN are generally using digital tools to assist access but the vast majority said they were ‘using but not confident’. We plan to explore this with our patients in 26/27 to understand what the challenges to building confidence are and how we can address them.
7) Our PCN will identify under-represented cohorts in the locality and with the assistance of a clinical and non-clinical champion hold four patient engagement events to improve access.
Help! How do I get in touch with the practice? Information on Access
We have changed the system of how you can book a routine appointment to try to improve waiting times. The demand on our surgery has increased dramatically since pre covid. In addition, there has been a huge increase in missed appointments which is making our wait time longer. We had 244 missed appointments in September.
We have changed our appointment system to make it more accessible and hopefully reduce the wait time. Appointments are now released in advance: at 4 weeks, 10 days, 5 days and 48 hours before the appointment time.
This should mean you won’t have such a long wait for an appointment but can also book in advance if this is what suits you.
Of course, we always have access on the day for urgent problems via our duty doctor.
Please help us to help you:
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Cancel your appointment if it is no longer needed so that another patient can benefit from it.
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Please be ready to explain to the receptionist the nature of your problem when requesting an appointment (whether it is urgent or routine) – this is so that our team can book you in with the appropriate clinician which may also mean an earlier appointment (Nurse, Healthcare Assistant, Phlebotomist, Clinical Pharmacist, First Contact Physio, Social Prescriber, Care Navigator etc).
There are also routine appointments available at hub practices with short waiting times: Connaught Square and Pimlico (evening and weekend)
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GP (telephone)
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Advanced Nurse Practitioner (Pimlico only)
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Nurse
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Healthcare Assistant
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Clinical Pharmacist
Accurx
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Accurx is the easy-to-use platform where patients and healthcare professionals communicate
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Use this for any non urgent health questions, fit notes or to send us a message and we will try our best to respond within 2 working days.
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Please send us a photo if this would help explain your condition; this will be saved to your medical records.
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Please do not use this for anything urgent as we do not always receive them promptly.
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Available 8am – 6.30pm, Monday to Friday via our website.
Please note depending on the nature of your problem, it may the case that you still need to book in for a face to face appointment for example if you need to be examined in person. Any complex queries which need a full discussion will need an appointment (telephone or face to face).
Emergencies
Please call our reception team (02074875244) and explain you feel you have an emergency.
The reception team are trained to ask you a few questions about your problem. Please answer them as well as you can.
This is important as they will be able to direct you to the most appropriate service or add you to the duty doctor list for a callback on the same day.
The duty doctor reads the summary written by reception and calls patients back based on clinical urgency.
This is not a first come first seen service and you cannot be provided with a specific time for a call.
If the doctor feels it is not an emergency then they may recommend that you book a routine appointment.
Available 8am – 6.30pm, Monday to Friday via our reception team (please phone in the morning if possible so the doctor can arrange a face to face appointment for you on the day if needed).
Requesting prescriptions
Please continue to request your regular medication via SystmOnline
This is directly linked to your repeat prescriptions on your record therefore is faster and easier to process.
Please do not use patches to request prescriptions as this is not linked directly to your online record and can result in delays.
Turnaround time: 2 working days.
Please note that new medications may need an appointment to discuss first. If a specialist has advised that you need a specific medication please send us the letter from the specialist with clear instructions on name of medication, dose and the reason why it should be prescribed.
Missed Appointments
We continue to have a high number of missed appointments.
Please cancel your appointment if you are unable to make it or speak with our reception team who will try and rearrange it for you.
Late for Appointments
Whilst we appreciate clinics are often running late, this usually happens because a doctor is having to spend extra time looking after an unwell patient.
In order to treat each patient fairly, if you are more than 10 minutes late for your appointment the doctor may ask you to reschedule or wait until the end of the clinic to see you.
Prospective Access to Full Medical Records
Please note automatic access to prospective medical records for anyone 16y+ has now been launched.
What will be included in the online view?
Entries added from October 2023 onwards including:
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Appointments
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Medication lists-Both acute and repeat in all apps, past drugs will show in the NHS App
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Allergies
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Documents / letters
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Test results
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Coded data, including Problem lists
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Consultation entries
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Immunisations
What are the benefits?
A patient with access to their own health data can better understand their own health, can research their own conditions, can have better ownership of their management and can be more responsible for their health outcomes. The patient may also be better enabled to monitor prescriptions, book and cancel appointments and to check results and referrals.
Note: Please be cautious when viewing your medical data and note that you may need to download information to view it. As such, if you are viewing your data on a non-private device please ensure you delete any downloaded items as well as logging off the system once you have finished viewing it, otherwise it may be available for other people to view.
