News
GPs: Treating Rural Britain
Urgent Appointments via Triage
FROM MONDAY 15TH APRIL 2024
We are moving to being an Online Urgent Same Day/ Urgent Advice Triage Practice from the above date. This means that all requests for an urgent same day appointment/urgent advice with a doctor or clinician are looked at and reviewed by a Doctor.
What this means for you:
- Online Urgent Triage ensures that your query is directed and dealt with appropriately making this a better and more efficient experience for you.
Care Navigation improves access to primary care services for patients and reduces GP pressures all in one. When you contact the practice to book an urgent same day appointment you will be asked to access our website to complete an online consultation form making sure you provide as much information as possible, alternatively, one of our administrators will send you a text with the link to access.
How do I contact the practice/request an urgent appointment?
- Use Accurx for urgent same day appointments.
- Receptionists will still be available via the phone if you are unable to access the internet and procedures will be in place for a questionnaire to be completed.
Tired of waiting on the phone? Use Accurx!
- Submit a medical or administrative request
- Please see the link below for a video on how to use Accurx.
Watch a video about how online triage works
What happens to my request?
- Urgent Medical requests are triaged by a clinician, who will decide on the most appropriate action and timescale, which may include, telephone or face to face appointment, advice or signposting to another service.
- Urgent medical requests- we will respond to you the same day
- Routine requests- we will respond to you within 2 working days
- Admin requests are viewed by a receptionist and directed to the most appropriate team member for action
Why we are making this change:
- This change should make it easier to submit requests to the practice and ensure that requests are seen by the most appropriate member of staff and dealt with in an appropriate timeframe.
Measles Outbreak
The UK is seeing a significant outbreak of measles. The UK Health Security Agency, which is part of the UK Government, has declared a national incident.
You can find really useful information on the NHS website here:- https://www.nhs.uk/measles.
We need your Support!
❗️Important Message regarding GP Practices❗️
We need your support, as a rural, dispensing GP practice we are under greater pressure than ever before, we are doing all we can, but your voice and support could make a difference in safeguarding our services into the future.
As a GP Practice, we are having to make difficult decisions that could affect the level of service we can deliver to our patients.
The income received from Welsh Government to provide medical care to patients is insufficient for us to carry on to continue providing the current range of services. Regretfully, you may see changes in the way services are delivered and the range of services we can provide.
For every patient registered with the GP practices we receive just £111.40 each year and in return, we offer unlimited medical appointments and advice to our patients.
Recent activity data shows that last year (22/23) alone, GP surgeries in Wales received a total of 27 million phone calls, with 19 million appointments offered, 1.3 million referrals to secondary care made and a total of 56 million prescription items issued all within a population of 3 million.
For the vast portfolio of services that we offer in general practice in 2020/21 general medical services had only 6.1% of NHS Wales budget. The percentage of NHS funding spent on general practice has fallen by 30% since 2005 from 8.7% to 6.1%, while at the same time the services provided by the practice has increased.
The NHS has been chronically underfunded for years, and in primary care it has gone relatively unnoticed due to the dedication of GPs and practice staff to continue providing a service. The system is, however, on the brink of collapse and GP Practices cannot keep making up the shortfall for the NHS, we simply do not have the capacity to do so. This saddens us as it is something we never thought we’d have to say.
We are, therefore, asking for your help and support. As given our rurality there are few other medical services locally to “prop up” the system if we are not here.
Please help us and other GP practices to secure a financial rescue package from the Welsh Government by signing and sharing this petition before it’s too late.
You can also help us by contacting your local Member of the Senedd (MS). We have to work together to try to keep GP surgeries open and enable us to keep providing the current range of service.
If the situation doesn’t improve, we fear more surgeries will close and the services we provide will be lost, and in a rural community such as ours there are limited alternative services to rely on or to replace us. Sign and share the petition https://petitions.senedd.wales/petitions/245944
Further information can be found here https://www.bma.org.uk/bma-media-centre/80-of-gps-express-patient-safety-concerns-as-gp-crisis-deepens-in-wales
Thank you for your support ❤️
Montgomery Partnership
BMA Cymru Wales
🌏🏆We’ve been awarded the Gold Award by the Greener Primary Care Wales Framework and Award Scheme🌏🏆
Montgomery Medical Practice awarded Gold Award by the Greener Primary Care Wales Framework and Award Scheme
Montgomery Medical Practice has been awarded a Gold Award for 2023 by the Greener Primary Care Wales Framework and Award Scheme.
What does this mean?
Climate change affects us all and can have negative impacts on individual and population health. We all need to do our part to mitigate climate change, including primary care practices. In 2018/19 the carbon footprint of NHS Wales was approximately 1 million tonnes of CO2e, 2.6% of Wales’s total greenhouse gas emissions, the highest in the public sector.
The Greener Primary Care Wales Framework and Award Scheme from Public Health Wales has been designed to help independent primary care contractors (community optometry, general practice, community pharmacy and primary care dental practices) to improve the environmental sustainability of their day-to-day practice.
That is why we, as a practice, have taken part in the framework for 2023.
We’re delighted to have received a Gold Award and are committed to reducing our impact on the environment.
Read more about the Scheme by visiting: https://primarycareone.nhs.wales/topics1/greener-primary-care/
