As a practice, we meet routinely with our Inspire Patient Group to discuss themes from patients and make improvements to our services. 

As our new appointment system has now been in place for a month, we met with the IPG to give us feedback from their population list of patients registered with IPG on how the system is working. 

We found lots of positives with the service from patients at the practice, though we were aware of some teething issues. 

With their guidance on what patients want, we helped implement a better and more in-depth 'How-To' guide and what happens with your request when accessing through our website. 

You can now see more information about how to request appointments, obtaining an urgent appointment when our form has been closed off for the day, better signposting and direct links to other services that can help and how to obtain an evening and weekend appointment for those patients that need them. 

The IPG regularly share their updates with the practice and you can join them and help your voice be heard by asking to become part of the IPG. 

Their e-mail address is ppgroup.ih@gmail.com 

Please note, the IPG is not part of Inspire Health and is a group with around 1000 active patients at the practice who collaborate and work alongside the practice. The IPG hold bi-monthly face to face meetings with some able to join remotely, or simply join to get up-to-date meeting notes. 

Dear Patients

The Partners of Inspire Health want to reassure you that we are doing all we can to continue to provide a safe, effective service despite the present and ongoing pressures throughout the whole of the NHS care system.  We understand how difficult it can be to get through on the phones and that at times we are sadly not able to meet your ideal expectations.

Despite all our doctors, nurses, other health care professionals and our dedicated admin staff and managers, working diligently long hours to provide your care, our capacity at times cannot meet the demand.  Often this leads to non-urgent issues being managed as an urgent problem due to lack of alternative appointments being available. This then causes difficulty safely managing genuine emergencies. As a result, we need to ensure, above all else, that we provide a safe service to you, our patients.  To do this we need to be able to see the most acutely unwell and vulnerable patients as a priority over those with more minor or longer standing issues. 

We have noted the feedback from recent patient questionnaires and are keen to start addressing some of your concerns, in particular with regard to access to appointments, getting through on the phone and continuity of care. We have been encouraged to receive positive feedback from yourselves regarding your clinical care during face to face or telephone appointments and we endeavour to maintain this high level of care.

In order to address your concerns, we are planning to change the process for accessing help and appointments in the practice. It is in line with national requirements that have been set for us and is similar to what many other practices in our area have already implemented. We plan to move towards electronic submissions of your clinical or administrative need, which will allow for a timely triage (preliminary assessment to determine urgency of need) of your clinical requests by a senior GP and a quick response with an appropriate action, without the need for you to spend long periods of time on the phone. We will however continue to take calls and convert them to this form of request for those unable to navigate the electronic submission themselves.

We very much appreciate your understanding and support for the changes that we need to make to facilitate this process.

From 27th February our new system will begin.

So, we will be asking, wherever possible, that patients submit their care requests to the practice via the electronic AccuRx programme on our website – it will be clear and easy to find on the website. The link for this will also be on our social media accounts and is https://florey.accurx.com/p/C81084.

Some of you are already using this and finding that it works well.  If you are not able to do this, we can do it for you over the phone, however, to avoid blocking the phone lines for urgent issues, we would encourage AccuRx online use if a friend or relative is able to help you.  These messages are saved within your record and a senior GP will review your request and arrange a response within the day with the details of either relevant advice or signposting, an appropriate call back or a face to face review at an appropriate date, place and time, depending on the urgency and type of request submitted.  We will also aim to maintain continuity of care if you have a usual or preferred clinician, where possible.

The senior GP will decide on which appointment to book with most appropriate health care professional. This may be a GP, trainee GP, medical student, an advanced clinical practitioner, pharmacist, paramedic or physician associate, all of whom are supported and supervised by our experienced GPs and is consistent with what we presently offer.

Every patient is important to us and will always be managed safely and appropriately, but this may mean that at times you may have to wait somewhat longer for a review in order to ensure those of you who need urgent care are able to access this. 

This electronic referral process will be open between 7.30am-12pm daily. Clinicians will start triaging at 8am.  Any emergency or very urgent issue before 8am will need to be triaged through 111 as it is at present. If we reach our maximum number of triage requests before 12pm, will we have to close off access early for that day. So, after that time in the day, if there is an emergency, this will need 111 or 999 triage. If it is not an emergency but clearly requiring an urgent response before the end of that day and cannot wait for electronic triage submission the following day, then we ask that you call the practice for urgent assessment. On the rare occasion that we then reach our safe limit for urgent clinical response due to unexpected surge in activity or staff sickness, we will give clear advice to patients about how and where to seek the help required.

We hope that this will provide a safer, more efficient service, however this will require co-operation and understanding from yourselves. 

Finally, we wish to thank you all in advance for your help and support in making this change successful for your benefit.

Yours faithfully

The GP Partners of Inspire Health

From time to time, we may ask you to complete a questionnaire, fill in a blood pressure reading or ask of you for something which you may not be expecting or may not have been asked before.

We just want to let you know that this is always in your best interest to ensure that you are keeping in line with your duty as a patient and our duty as a healthcare provider.

Usually we will only ask you for some of these requests either once every year or once every few years. If you ever think you have received anything in error, or feel like you are getting too many messages from us, let us know and our helpful team will look into this for you!

We need to let all of our patients know about an important change happening at Inspire Health. The practice has taken the difficult decision to apply for permission to close our site at St Philips Drive in Hasland, and our local Integrated Care Board has granted permission in principle.

We want to hear patient and local stakeholder views and concerns or feedback and we hope by having clear communication with patients we can allay any fears or worries.

You can read further information and give your own feedback in various ways as follows:

• Visit our website for information, FAQ's and regular updates, you can submit comments and feedback via our website by visiting the following link 

  St Phillips Drive Closure / FAQ's

• See our frequently asked questions sheet which gives more detail about the changes.
• Give any written comments and suggestions by posting them into the suggestions boxes provided at each surgery site.
• Attend one of our face to face drop in sessions at St Philips Drive. The dates and times will be confirmed as soon as possible.

Dear Patients,

Inspire Health, like most of general practice across the country, are finding it difficult to meet the demand on appointments. There are a number of factors causing this, including resource, autumn & winter pressures, increased demand post covid and a large factor is difficulty in recruitment due to staff shortages beyond our control

We understand access to GP services can be difficult and frustrating. We would like to maintain access and continuity as best we can for patients. However, at times the demand is overwhelming, creating risk for both patients and staff. To help maintain safety, we need to gather information about your needs. This allows us to suggest or arrange the right service for you. Sometimes this may include alternate options to a GP appointment.  This helps us "triage" patients with the most serious illness or pressing needs. We appreciate this may not suit everyone, but we feel this is needed to manage patients and their needs as best we can.

All staff at Inspire are working hard to provide the best care for our patients that we can, with the resources available to us. We hope you understand the pressures on general practice at the moment and are able to support us, ensuring those most in need receive care.

Yours faithfully

The GP Partners of Inspire Health

Please remember to cancel your appointment if you cannot make it.

Below is a list of appointments that were not attended in the month of December and how many hours that would equate to. These appointments, if had been noted in advance, would then have been able to be rebooked for someone else.

Blood Tests:

76 appointments - 13.5 hours 

Flu / Vaccination Clinics:

29 appointments - 1.8 hours 

GP face to face appointments or urgent appointment that were requested and had no reponse after they had been called on multiple occasions: 

43 appointments - 8.5 Hours 

Nurse Appointments or Long term condition reviews: 

108 appointments - 26 hours 

Specialist Reviews: 3 appointments - 1 hour 

You can now use our web-based appointment booking service on a PC or smartphone. 

Please follow the steps carefully and enter as many details as you can to ensure we are able to respond to you. 

Click here to take you there!

If it's a simple query that isn't clinical, you can always contact us there! 

The current NHS Digital (NHSD) extract of GP data for Research purposes (known as the GPDPR) has been delayed due to NHSD wishing to review the way in which this data will be collected, to conduct more public involvement and information about the plans and change the way in which patients can opt out of the extract of their GP data.

Currently the only way to opt out is to complete a Type 1 opt out form and return this to the practice by the 1^st September.  However, this extract will not be taken until the NHSD have changed the way it will take the data and respect the patient’s choice for using their data.  NHSD are introducing the following changes to the opt out process which will mean that patients will be able to change their opt-out status at any time::-

• Patients do not need to register a Type 1 opt-out by 1st September to ensure their GP data will not be uploaded.

• NHS Digital will create the technical means to allow GP data that has previously been uploaded to the system via the GPDPR collection to be deleted when someone registers a Type 1 opt-out.

• The plan to retire Type 1 opt-outs will be deferred for at least 12 months while we get the new arrangements up and running and will not be implemented without consultation with the RCGP, the BMA and the National Data Guardian. 

This means that you can opt out at any time in the future and NHSD will delete data that they already have taken for research purposes, the deadline of the 01/09/2021 has been delayed until a new system of opt out is developed.  Hopefully, this will be a simple centralised approach via the NHS app or NHS website to avoid paper form and administration work for your GP.

We will update you when we know more about the NHSD plans to change how you can control who has access to your data.