Care Navigation

Posted on October 11th, 2023

We will now ask for a brief outline of your problem when you call to make an appointment at the practice. This isn’t because our reception staff are nosy but it’s a new approach that we call care navigation.

Through specialist training, our team can now offer more choice on who to see in the practice and help you get to the right health professional fast. Our receptionists never offer clinical advice or triage; this is about offering you the choice to see other specialists in our practice team if they have the expertise to deal with your problem; often quicker and without the need to see the GP each time.

For example, we often get calls that can be dealt with by a physiotherapist, the pharmacist, sometimes even the secretaries, that you may not be aware of if you haven’t visited the practice in a while.

By working this way, it helps us to free up time for GPs to care for our patients with complex or serious health conditions. More importantly though, it means you are seen by the clinician that is best placed to deal with your problem each time you visit us. The choice is up to you.

Agencies involved in this pilot are:

• Pharmacies
• Talking therapies (councellors etc)
• Midwifery
• Contraception and Sexual Health
• Physiotherapy
• Smoking Cessation

It would help the team to help you if you were to inform the receptionist why you need an appointment to see a GP.