Appointments

Rothschild House Group operates a GP Led Triage system to ensure that patients receive timely access to the correct type of appointment.

Same day appointments are for urgent medical problems and not for repeat prescriptions, sick notes or routine referrals.

​Before you contact the practice to request an urgent appointment please think about whether there are any other services that might be more appropriate. For example, remember that pharmacists are trained to give advice about minor health problems and answer any questions about your medicines and treatment. The NHS App, website and NHS 111 system are also available to guide you to appropriate sources of advice.

​We understand that many people are reluctant to tell our Patient Services Coordinators about the reason that they want to see a doctor however our Patient Services Coordinators are now very much part of the clinical team.  Gathering basic clinical information allows the GP to triage patients and also allows them to prepare and review patient history on a specific issue prior to any appointment. The use of a GP led triaging system to allocate our urgent appointments allows us to ensure that there are appointments available in the afternoon for those who may be taken unwell later in the day.

Please understand that both patient services and our clinical staff are trying to meet the needs of all our patients, each of whom is very important.

How to book an appointment?

There are several ways to book an appointment.

If you require an urgent on the day appointment, please use our online eConsult form or call the Surgery. All urgent requests are triaged by a GP who decides when an appointment is required based on medical need.  You can call anytime during our opening hours and your issue will receive the same priority for an appointment.

If you require a routine appointment you can book this via a number of ways.

• You can book an appointment via the NHS App or Patient Access, the app will allow you to book a face-to-face appointment with your named GP at present, if you would prefer a telephone consultation please comment this in the ‘reason for appointment box’ and it will be noted on our system for the doctor to call instead. 
• You can also ring the Surgery and book with one of our Patient Services Coordinators, it is recommended you ring after 3pm as generally these are our quieter times.

Please note we release our online bookable appointments at varying intervals and we would encourage you to check back should you not see an appointment, on the first time of looking.

If you are having trouble accessing the NHS app or Patient Access, please make sure you are registered for online services, this can be done HERE 

Patients can also submit an online consultation/contact form for either admin requests or urgent medical issues this form provides the GP with a lot of the information they will require to either provide advice or reduce the length of any appointment time. Please click HERE to submit an eConsult form.

If you are housebound or too ill to come to the Surgery and require a home visit please contact the practice ideally before 10:30am to request a visit. You will normally be allocated a telephone consultation initially to assess your clinical needs and if a home visit is deemed necessary a doctor or our paramedic practitioner will visit you at an agreed time following this.

At present we do not have nursing appointments, including blood tests available to book online. If you require a nurse appointment, please ring the surgery and book via our Patient Services team. We are unable to release nurse slots online due to the complexity and variety of appointments offered by the nursing team.

As explained above, we are unable to release blood test appointments online, instead they can be booked via our Patient Services Team once a request form has been raised by a GP. The decision to remove these appointments from online booking services, is in part due to the high volume of inappropriately booked blood tests we encounter daily. These are blood tests which have not been requested by a GP to be completed. We need to ensure blood test appointments are used for those patients that need them for example those who need long term condition monitoring, require medications reviews or acute blood tests as requested by a GP. As we can use self-book links, which many patients will have received before e.g. to book their flu jab, those patients who are required to have a blood test, can be sent a link to book into an appropriate blood test slot via a text message sent directly to them.

We are also no longer able to perform blood tests for patients under the age of 11 years old. These will need to be completed at the paediatric phlebotomy service at a local hospital. Furthermore, Hospital Phlebotomy tests which a hospital clinician has requested for a patient to have, need to be undertaken using the hospital phlebotomy services rather than by the Practice. This will ensure that the test result goes directly to the requesting hospital Dr, in addition to the Practice not being resourced to undertake hospital requested tests. We will make some exceptions, but this is decided on a case by case basis by the patient’s named GP.

Thank you for your understanding.

How our triage system works

Patients requesting an urgent on the day appointment will be put onto the GP Triage list. Patients requesting routine appointments, bloods etc will be treated as normal.

Each patient will be asked a series of triage questions by our Patient Services Team, the on the day triage Doctor will then triage each patient based on the information they provided.

The GP will make the decision on what type of appointment should be offered to the patient or if an alternative is better suited i.e. a prescription for antibiotics should be issued.

Patient Services will either text you the GPs decision or call where text messaging has not been consented to or where there is no registered mobile number.

The triage outcome communication will clearly outline the GPs decision.

Emergencies

If the patient is suffering from any of the following dial 999 immediately:

• Severe chest pains, sweating, clamminess, pain radiating down left arm.
• Unconscious/collapsed.
• Turning blue.
• Head Injury.
• Bleeding profusely.
• Weak and floppy with a rash (especially if child).

What to do when you need medical assistance and the Practice is closed

For more information on Out of Hours Services click HERE.

Additional GP Appointments – Extended Access

Dacorum Extended Access offers a GP Service patients operating throughout the weekdays from 16.00 to 21.00, Saturdays from 9:00-13.00 and 14:00-18:00 and Sundays from 09:00 -13:00. It is an appointments based primary care service and they can be booked via our Patient Services Team.

Appointments are either telephone or face-to-face, this will be confirmed when the appointment is booked.

It is staffed by local GPs at Highfield Surgery, West Herts Medical Centre, The Nap in Kings Langley and Rothschild House Group, Berkhamsted. The GPs have full access to your medical notes and will update them appropriately following your consultation.

If you need to cancel an Extended Access appointment, please call the surgery in hours (08:00 to 18:30 Mon to Fri).