Patient Charter

‘’You and your general practice’’

GP Contract in 2025/26

24 GP Practice Telephone Signposting and Care Navigation.jpg

Faster Care Navigation, Assessment, and Response: Patient Triage

NHS Definition:

When and how can you contact your general practice?

Your general practice is open from 8.00am to 6.30pm, Monday to Friday.

Throughout these hours you, or your carer on your behalf, can:

Visit the practice
Call them
Go online using the practice’s website or the NHS App.

You can choose the way you contact your practice based on what is best for you. Some practices may have longer hours or may ask that you contact them via phone or in person for urgent queries.

What happens when you contact your practice to request an appointment?

Whether you make your request by phone, on-line or visiting your practice, you may be asked to give your practice some details so that they can assess what is best for you based on your clinical need.

The practice team will consider your request for an appointment or medical advice and tell you within one working day what will happen next.

This could be:

An appointment that day or a subsequent day
A phone call that day or a subsequent day
A text message responding to your query
Advice to go to a pharmacy or another NHS service.

Your practice will decide what is best for you based on your clinical need.

Your practice cannot tell you to just call back the next day.

Who might help you?

You might be offered a face-to-face appointment or a phone call with a GP or other member of the practice staff, like a nurse or pharmacist.

If you have a carer, they can speak for you with your consent.

You can ask to see a preferred healthcare professional, and the practice will try to meet your request, although you might have to wait longer for that person to be available.

It can be helpful to see the same healthcare professional, particularly if you have a long-term health condition.

NHS Patient Care Navigation Solution:

A Signposting and Care Navigation Toolkit for GP Practices that supports your staff book an appointment for your patient that is appropriate to their need, importantly, covering all methods of contact by the patient, not just by telephone.

NO NEED FOR A CLINICIAN TO MANAGE THE TRIAGE REQUESTS.

This wastes valuable clinical time and resources that can be spent in front of the patients who need them.

The Toolkit is a practice focused CLOUD BASED system:

The Toolkit is the script from your clinical team telling your patients what they need to do to access the care they need.
Each Practice has its own dedicated Toolkit link
The whole practice can use the link to access the content of the Toolkit
All content is decided by the Practice Clinical & Management Team
The Toolkit is FULLY amendable to become the script for the admin team to engage with patient enquiries
There is no password access, so no staff details are taken
No software downloads into the practice computer system
No access at all to clinical systems
No clinical decision-making by 3rd parties

This care navigation toolkit is your script for your staff to follow, and will make the delivery:

More consistent to all patients,
Supportive to staff so they have the information they need.
Supportive to patients ensuring they get the right solution straight away.
Please read some of the feedback from your colleagues who explain how their appointment demand has been transformed overnight.