Welcome to South Hermitage Surgery

We are confident that our website will provide clear and concise help and give our patients the information they require in an easy and convenient format. It has been designed with the patient’s needs at the forefront of everything, from checking surgery times to letting us know what you think of us.

Our dedicated team are here to treat those minor ailments that occur as well as providing specialist management of long-term conditions and clinics covering a wide range of healthcare issues. The technology also means you can now do a lot of things from the comfort of your home such as order a repeat prescription or cancel an appointment.

Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) vaccination programme

From 1 September 2024, those who turn 75 and those age 75 to 79 will be eligible for a free vaccine to protect them from respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

RSV is an infectious disease of the airways and lungs. RSV infection often causes symptoms similar to a cold, including:

· cough

· sore throat

· sneezing

· a runny or blocked nose

It can also make you become wheezy or short of breath and lead to pneumonia and other life-threatening conditions. There is no specific treatment, and most infections will get better by themselves. Every year thousands of older adults need hospital care for RSV, and some of them will die. RSV can be more severe in people with medical conditions such as heart or lung disease or a weakened immune system.

RSV infection is common in young children but is most serious for small babies and for older people

Eligibility for the RSV vaccination

Everyone turning 75 years old on or after the 1 September 2024 will be offered a single dose of RSV vaccine. This is because older adults are more at risk of serious complications from RSV. You can still get the vaccine up to the day before you turn 80.

For the first year of the programme, the vaccine will also be offered to those who are already aged 75 to 79 years on 1 September 2024 as part of a catch up programme.

If you are not yet 75 the NHS will invite you for vaccination once you turn 75.

Invitations

As a Practice we will send you an SMS text message with an online appointment booking link if you’re eligible. Please promptly action the SMS text message once received. For those who don’t have mobiles, or text messages appear undelivered, we will contact you to offer the appointment.

For more information about the vaccine, side effects and the programme please visit

South Hermitage Appointment Changes

Following a review of our appointment system we have recognised that we have too many ‘on the day’ appointments and not enough routine appointments. There generally appears to be increased demand placed upon us for on the day appointments and of course our list is growing.

To try and address this we have looked at how the appointment could be managed better and try and move back toward a system where we can offer more routine appointments and less on the day appointments.

There are several ways in which we aim to do this:

We have employed 2 new GP’s

We have introduced a new telephone system to enable patients to get to the right place qucker

From Monday 5^th august, we have changed the appointment booking system to the following:

Urgent - on the day or within 24 hrs

Urgent - within 48 hrs

Urgent - within a week

Everything after a week is routine

The reception team will provide care navigation to ensure patients are signposted appropriately, with the support of our GPs.  

The system will be trialled for the next 3 weeks. We know we will need to ‘tweak the appointment schedule as we go along, so please try and bear with us. This is new to all.

We want to try and free up as many on the day appointments as we can, so that our wait time for routine appointments becomes less and less.

For minor issues, patients can also go to the pharmacy as a first port of call

We can also refer to the pharmacy through a new service called ‘Pharmacy First’ for the following 7 common symptoms:

• Otitis media
• Impetigo
• Infected insect bites
• Shingles (with exceptions)
• Sinusitis
• Sore throat
• Simple UTIs

Online Consultation Service

We have now gone live with our new online consultation service-Patient Triage. This is a great way for you to contact our practice for non-urgent medical or admin requests. It is very simple to fill out so please do give it a go if you need to contact us.

This short online form is the quickest and simplest way for the majority of our patients to access our clinical team for assistance. Our practice phone lines remain open for anyone with accessibility needs who might find difficulty completing this form.

If you do not have access to the internet or find it difficult to use a computer or smartphone you can call reception instead, during surgery hours.

Use this for NON URGENT messages or queries, to order fit or sick notes, request GP letters or raise queries about medication.  Please do not use this service to order your repeat prescriptions - use NHS App, Patient Access or POD.

Use our online consultation service (Patient Triage) for non-urgent advice only - please note the mailbox is not monitored after 2.30 pm so any urgent messages would not be seen until the next working day.

Click on "Submit new request" on the image below to create an online request:

Please do not use this online form for urgent or emergency requests. The submitted forms will only be read up until 2.30 pm weekdays. The forms will not be read at the weekends (Saturdays and Sundays) or on bank holidays.  Please contact 111 during out of hours or 999 if this is an emergency.

To find out more about how to submit an online request - watch this short video by clicking on the link:

USING NHS 111 FOR MEDICAL ADVICE

For urgent medical advice, you can contact NHS 111 online or call 111 free from any phone. This service is available 24 hours a day, including Bank Holidays, and after answering a few questions you will be directed to the best place to get the medical help and advice you need. Always call 999 for life-threatening emergencies such as a stroke or heart attack.

We are currently seeing increasing demand on the NHS111 call centres leading to people repeat calling or abandoning calls.

The www.nhs.ukwebsite is designed to help those that think they need urgent care access the NHS111 service using their laptop, mobile phone or tablet. Using the website increases capacity and is welcomed by those in your communities that are comfortable and well versed in using online services. GPs have been asked to promote this service to their patients and provide the following information:

If you need urgent care, please use NHS111 online on 111.nhs.uk

If you’re unable to access the website call 111

In cases of suspected Strep A parents should check symptoms on nhs.uk/strepA

If, on checking symptoms parents still think they need help try 111.nhs.uk-if the child is under 5 they will be prompted to call the 111 number

ORDERING PRESCRIPTIONS

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Extended Access

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SOCIAL MEDIA

We are now on Facebook and Twitter!

We will be using these channels to communicate news, NHS campaigns and other surgery info. Clicking the below links will take you directly to our pages!

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ASK DEBS!

If you're under 24, why not ask our online Agony Aunt Debs any confidential questions you might have and see if she can help you. Ask Debs or email her on deb.fitzsimmons@nhs.net.