Sandgate Road work as part of a primary care network (PCN) have brought general practices together to work at scale and deliver a wider range of services to patients, involving a wider set of staff roles than might be feasible in individual practices, for example, first contact physiotherapy, extended access, pharmacists and social prescribing.
This means that when you contact Sandgate Road for an appointment our reception team have a number of different services they can book you an appointment with. Some are based at Sandgate Road and others at sites around Folkestone and beyond.
In order for the receptionist to book you the most appropriate appointment it is important that they ask questions to ascertain to the right service for you. The guidance the receptionists use to direct you to a service is based upon your GP’s advice.
Sandgate Road operate a GP triage system. This means that all initial appointments with a GP will be via a telephone or online consultation. If the GP feels that a face to face appointment is required they will arrange this for you. This system enables the GP’s to have more patient contacts per day, increasing the number of patients who can access our service. It has also significantly reduced wasted appointments where patients do not attend for a pre-booked face to face appointment.
Patients are able to book face to face appointments with our nursing and pharmacy team directly through our reception team. We have good availability for the majority of nursing and pharmacy face to face appointments, so if the matter is not urgent please consider phoning later in the day when the phone lines are not as busy.
In addition the practice offers online consultations via our practice website using a system called E-consult. Following patient feedback from 12th November 2023 the practice will be changing the times that E-consults are available . From this date patients will be able to access E-consults from 18:30 in the evening every Sunday-Thursday (except Bank Holidays)
The practice has also massively increased the number of appointment invitations being sent to patients online. This has helped increase patient choice on how they access our services and reduced the demand on the phone system leading to reduced waiting times.
