Online form opening times
From 1st April 2025 the prioryCARE form will be available 8am to 6pm Monday to Friday. This is to mirror our opening hours - phone lines and reception desks are also available during this time.
Our surgeries will continue to close for lunch 12:15-12:45. We sometimes need to close our smaller sites in the afternoon to ensure safe staffing (i.e. no lone working) - this is usually Park View surgery and we will update on Facebook page and waiting rooms with this information.
Why are we changing the online form to 8am-6pm Monday to Friday?
Over the last 4-5 years since we introduced the prioryCARE online form, healthcare has changed hugely. We are still experiencing high demand for appointments in general practice and patients are experiencing extremely long waits for appointments in hospital clinics and for routine surgery.
We have reviewed how patients can access us and we have noted some inequity i.e patients that can get online, have access to us earlier than those without online access. We want to ensure fairness to all our patients so now patients can access us online, by phone and in our reception areas from 8am every weekday morning. Our contracted opening hours are 8am to 6pm and it is important we prioritise patient access in this time frame rather than out of hours. If you have an urgent health need before 8am in the morning or after 6pm in the evening, NHS111 are available 24/7 and can help advise/signpost you to the most appropriate health service (GP, urgent treatment centre, pharmacy, dentist or A+E etc).
The government have recently announced they want to end the 8am rush and we support this. We still experience a peak of contact at 8am every morning (Mondays being the busiest) but try our best to offer our patients access to our services throughout the working day.
Our phone lines, reception areas and online form are all open across our opening hours. If you are able to use the online prioryCARE form, you will be able to avoid the queue and let us know (in your own words) what the problem is. We know that the form is lengthy and can feel confusing at times but we do encourage you to complete it in full and accurately. This allows the symptoms to be triaged appropriately and those patients that need to be seen quickly, can be prioritised in our urgent care/same day clinics. Should you need help with this or are unsure what to do then please call us or pop into one of our surgeries.
For patients using the prioryCARE form to request prescriptions - you can use the NHSapp or SystmOnline online account to request these 24/7.
As previously highlighted on our Urgent Care page, same day/urgent appointments do sometimes reach capacity (fill up), when this happens we will direct appropriate patients to NHS111/pharmacy. We are striving to reduce out routine wait times which have been reduced to 4-5 weeks in recent times and we continue to provide increasing appointments to bring this down further.
If you need urgent advice/assessment outside of our opening hours please use NHS111 and some local pharmacies open in the evenings and during weekends.
