Appointments

How to make an appointment?

You can make an appointment via the following ways:

  • Booking an appointment by using our appointments tab on the home page. You can complete a triage form for a GP / Paramedic or Advanced nurse practitioner appointment or use SystmOnline for smears / health checks / asthma / COPD appointments. You will need to be registered for our online services. Please complete our Register for Online Services form to use this option.
  • You can also use the NHS app for booking appointments.
  • If you have no access to online services you can call the practice on 01462 732200 (our telephone lines reach high demand, we apologise in advance if you are kept waiting and advise where possible you use our online services).

Please note if the practice has reached capacity for appointments that day you will be redirected to other services. Our triage service opens at 7am ready for the practice opening at 8am.

Urgent appointments

An urgent consultation is for a medical problem that cannot reasonably wait until the next available, routine appointment. Typically, this will be due to a new illness or a sudden deterioration in an existing illness.

It is not intended that urgent consultations will be used for routine matters, including blood pressure checks, repeat medication requests, requests for sick notes etc. If you consider your condition meets these requirements when all the routine appointments have been allocated, you will be offered a telephone triage consultation with the clinician.

You will be required to give a contact number that will be available at any time throughout the day; the clinician will ring a maximum of twice, if neither call is answered, you will need to ring back if you still need assistance (please note, the call will come from a “withheld” number so the telephone number will not be shown).

The clinician will assess your condition and decide whether you need to be seen (and who by) or offer advice, which may or may not include issuing a prescription or booking an appointment. This may not be with the healthcare professional of your choice. Patients misusing an urgent consultation will be asked to make a normal, routine appointment.

Telephone consultations

We have slots available on a daily basis for “Telephone Advice” with a doctor if you feel your problem could be helped over the phone. Once you have booked a telephone slot time, the doctor will try and ring you as near to that time as possible.

Your phone must be able to receive telephone calls from withheld numbers as our telephone number is automatically withheld.

We’re here for you, for longer – GP extended access service

Appointments with a GP or practice nurse are now available in the evenings and weekends for patients registered at this practice, these are called extended access appointments.

We are working with other practices in Bedfordshire to provide these additional appointments to increase access to healthcare at times that are convenient to patients.

When you call to make an appointment, we may offer you an extended access appointment. This appointment could be held at another practice and with a GP or practice nurse from another practice.

Our reception team will confirm all of the details at the time of booking, and if you are registered to receive text message alerts, you will receive a text message to confirm the date, time, and location of your appointment.

At the current time, extended access appointments are not available to book online.

There has been no change to normal surgery appointments which are available as usual. If you would prefer to see a GP or practice nurse from this practice, please book an appointment during normal opening hours.

Preference for particular healthcare professionals

Patients have to be registered with a named GP, in order for the extensive practice administration to be shared equally amongst the partners. However, you have the right to express a preference of which healthcare professional you wish to see.

When booking an appointment please inform the receptionist who will try to accommodate your request. However, this may not always be possible due to the demands placed on the service at times of holiday and sickness absence.

Cancelling appointments

If you are unable to keep an appointment, please let the surgery know as soon as possible in order for us to reallocate the appointment to someone else. You can cancel an appointment by:

We can now send an SMS reminder the day before a booked appointment, so please ensure you let us have your up-to-date mobile phone number.

By giving your mobile number, it will be assumed that you consent to us sending you SMS messages regarding appointments or services at the surgery.