Like all Primary Care providers we are constantly trying to improve both the quality and accessibility of our service. We face the same challenges as others in trying to provide both continuity of care, and urgent access which is responsive for those that need it.
We acknowledged that our appointment systems were trying to offer both kinds of access simultaneously which created its own challenges, particularly when delivered by an increasingly pressured GP workforce carrying vacancies. We decided to widen our multidisciplinary team.
We employ a practice pharmacist, an advanced paramedic practitioner and an advanced nurse practitioner to support the duty doctor in providing all of the urgent/on-the-day care for our largest site.
We are very proud of our urgent care team, who have worked hard together, and with support, to build their clinical skills to meet this challenge. Our urgent care team is more responsive and is able to deal with queries usually within an hour and see patients when requested. In turn the rest of our team are able to offer more pre-booked appointments to increase the continuity we can offer. We strongly feel this is a way not only to meet our patients needs better, but is a more sustainable model of Primary Care.
We urge everyone to embrace their multi-disciplinary team too! Dr Jonathan Cope Managing Partner - Beacon Medical Group [email protected] @jgcope