Total Triage – Changes from Monday 24th April 23

All the staff at Forge Medical Practice have been concerned for sometime regarding the rising demand for appointments and our capacity to meet this demand. We understand the frustrations patients are having in phone queues trying to get appointments only to be told quite quickly during the day that all the appointments have gone. What we have started to recognise is that patients have switched to booking appointments online, or queuing at the front door at 8am each morning to get the appointment. We are seeing increasing number of patients booking appointments that do not require an appointment, and we are concerned that those patients we need to be seeing are not getting seen at the right time when needed. 

We have decided to introduce a Total Triage Model of care for our surgery. This means, that anybody requesting an appointment or advice will have their request triaged instead of being advised to “call back tomorrow at 8am”. 

These online consultation forms provide us with key information about your problem, so that if you need to be seen urgently, we can arrange an urgent appointment as soon as possible. No-one will be told that “there are no appointments left, please call back tomorrow” anymore, and an assessment of need can be made to ensure you see the right person at the right time.

eConsults can be submitted via the NHS App, or via our website. If for any reason there is a legitimate barrier to you being unable to submit an eConsult, you can speak to one of our Care Navigators who can assist in making as assessment of your need.

Change can be daunting, and we understand that not everyone will welcome this new approach but we feel it is the best way forward in ensuring patients’ needs can be met safely and efficiently and believe that in implementing this new strategy we will be better placed in delivering a robust service to our patients.

The planned launch date of this new way of working is planned for Monday 24th April 23.

Yours sincerely

Forge Medical Practice