ANNOUNCEMENT FROM AYRSHIRE & ARRAN HEALTH BOARD - 10TH JANUARY 2023
Due to demand on the healthcare system, A&AHB have asked GPs to prioritise urgent and emergency care for patients. This is something we have always done at Frew Terrace Surgery but at the moment we are still also able to offer our usual triage system. The level of service we provide is assessed on a daily basis and if we have to move to 'emergencies only' then information will be updated here and via our text messaging system.
NEWSLETTER UPDATE
Further to our November newsletter, we can advise that we have recently met with Ruth Maguire MSP, the Primary Care Manager and representatives from the Health & Social Care Partnership. The Primary Care Team and HSCP are now engaging with us about our premises and further meetings have been scheduled to pursue this matter further. Unfortunately, our MSP was unable to help on this occasion.
General Information
There has been a significant increase in the volume of calls coming through to the surgery. In fact, our team handle an average of over 30,000 calls each month! The practice staff are working to the best of our capabilities to deal with incoming calls but would ask for your patience and understanding during this time. Unfortunately, this has led to an increase in our staff being verbally abused either on the telephone or in person and we would ask for your patience and understanding while we work in such difficult circumstances. However, should any patient be abusive towards a staff member then we will take a zero tolerance approach to such incidents.
Welcome
We have invested significantly in improving our patient facing IT infrastructure and are happy to announce that we have launched eConsult to make it easier to access health information that ever before, have integrated remote video consultation clinics into our day to day via NHS Attend Anywhere and have redesigned and updated the practice website to include more information regarding our services and to make it easier to find reliable information regarding your health as much of what can be found on the internet is false (sometimes known as "fake news").
Our eConsult service allows you to seek help for a new symptom or existing condition for yourself or your child, to request an administrative service (such as a fit note or GP letter). You can access it by clicking on the large blue eConsult banner found on the main page of our website or by clicking here. This service is open Monday to Friday from 8am to 6.30pm.
Prescriptions
Along with an increased demand for appointments, we have also been experiencing a steady increase in requests for prescriptions. Please help us to meet the needs of all of our patients by only ordering what you need around 7 working days before you need it. We need to manually check every early order and these usually will not be processed.
Please also note that we are separate from all of our local pharmacies including Boots Pharmacy at Frew Terrace. Our pharmacy colleagues are trying their best to cope with the demand for prescriptions but have advised that it may now take up to 7 working days for your prescription to be processed.
Medical Staff Changes
We are delighted to welcome our current doctors in training Dr Brutin (Foundation Trainee) and Dr Nelson (GP Specialist Registrar).
Holly Health App
Holly Health is a mobile app for personalised healthy habit coaching.
For more information and to sign up please go to https://hly.app/frewterrace-gp