Online Consultations from 1st October 2025
Donnington Medical Practice Surgery appointment changes
From the 1st of October 2025 how we book appointments is changing to bring us in line with NHSE and the government changes to accessing your GP.
The last few years have been extremely busy and challenging for all GP practices, with the increase in new building developments and no investment in infrastructure to support this, this has subsequently lead to patients ringing at 8.30am in the morning to try to get appointments, along with the other 300-400 calls coming in before 9.00am for medication queries and test results, and with patients being told everyday there is nothing left is very frustrating, and equally our team struggle with not being able to help everyone (believe me, they really do try.)
Patients sometimes had to ring several mornings to finally get through.
The telephone queue system, although it works very well did not allow for us to prioritize and we don’t know who is waiting in the telephone queue, and as a result, severely ill patients could not be prioritized over routine appointments that could be seen at a later date.
We want to do better, avoid the telephone queues and make sure we can identify severely ill patients as a priority.
The new online consultation system will allow patients to request a routine appointment easily. Patients requesting urgent clinical appointments should either attend the practice in person or by telephone. With the information provided from the online forms you complete , clinicians can decide who needs to be seen urgently, where it is more appropriate for a patient to be seen by an Advance Nurse practitioner or indeed one of the nurses, but this also includes other professionals such as our first-contact physio, our pharmacist, or our social prescribing team who can see an appointment in a few days.
We have not forgotten our elderly patients or patients who might struggle or have no internet access. There still is the option to ring the surgery or call in and have assistance with filling in the form. This may mean sharing your information with one of our team as they complete the online form for you, so you may prefer to have a family member or friend complete the form on your behalf.
Please be patient with us, we are all here to help and the team here will do the very best to help anyone who needs assistance with the completion of the forms, if you haven’t already downloaded the NHS app, then you should do so, as this app will also allow access to your medical records and test results, referral information and of course you can order your medication through the NHS app.
You can access the forms on our website https://www.donningtonmedicalpractice.co.uk/
You can click on this Link https://accurx.nhs.uk/patient-initiated/m82012
You can read about how to submit and how it works by clicking on this link: https://support.accurx.com/en/articles/5390855-patient-support-how-to-submit-an-online-request-to-your-gp-practice?
Please be patient with the team, this is new for us as well, and we are trying hard to make it run as smoothly as possible for everyone.
Yours sincerely
The Donnington Medical Practice Team