APPOINTMENTS ADVICE

Booking Appointments

Opening times

The Surgery will be open from 8.00am to 6.00pm Monday, & Friday and 8.00 am to 8 pm Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

How to Book

You can make an appointment to see your doctor either by telephone (01395) 222777, by calling into reception or online using our online services. If you are not registered to use online services please contact the reception team who will be happy to help you to register.

Choice of Appointment we offer you

We provide face to face appointments with our Doctors, Nurses, HCA Team and Phlebotomist, who are also happy to speak to you on the telephone if perhaps all you need is some advice.
Video consultations are available for patients who wish to speak to their doctor via a video link on their smart/phone device.
We also offer a patient triage service by AccuRX Plus - a quick online form, which the doctor triages and contacts you with the next step, either an appointment, a phone call or an SMS message with instructions or reassurance.
We are happy to address your health needs via email or SMS.

We try not to book our appointments for more than 2 weeks in advance, thereby enabling us to ensure an available appointment within a few days. If you need to see the doctor urgently, you will be fitted in that day as an emergency, but one of the doctors will probably telephone you first to assess the problem. All appointments are booked at ten minute intervals. Should you feel that you require a longer appointment or are unsure, please give as much information as possible to the receptionist, who will advise you accordingly.

Should you be unable to keep your appointment, please phone or text to cancel as soon as possible, which will enable it to be given to someone else. It is Practice policy to telephone you if you do not cancel your appointment and fail to attend.

Holiday Visitors and Temporary Residents

We are happy to see any relative or friend staying with you who requires medical treatment whilst away from home as a Temporary Resident as long as they are eligible for NHS treatment.

Missed Appointments - Polite Request

NHS England has warned that patients miss one in 20 GP appointments and it is costing the NHS on average £200m every year. The Latest NHS Digital GP appointments data suggests that 15.4m GP appointments are going to waste every year because patients who don't turn up are not giving staff sufficient notice make the appointments available to other patients. Of the wasted appointments, just under half - 7.2m were scheduled with GP's themselves. This adds up to more than 1.2m GP hours wasted each year - the cost equivalent of over 600 GPs working full time for a year.

NHS England urged People who could not attend to cancel appointments. With each appointment slot costing the NHS an average of £30, the cost of the missed GP appointments comes to about £216m a year.

NHS England states this could pay for either:

The annual salary of 2,325 Full time GPs;
224,640 Cataract Operations;
58,320 Hip Replacement Operations;
216,000 Drug Treatment courses for Alzheimer's or;
The Annual Salary of 8,424 Full time Community Nurses.
In 2022, the number of missed appointments at Haldon House Surgery was 816 in the year.

As you are aware, demand for appointments is high. Please let us know if you are unable to attend your appointment so that it can be offered to someone else.

Many thanks for your help