Noticeboard

***IMPORTANT NOTICE***

****PLEASE NOTE WE DO NOT ACCEPT PRESCRIPTION REQUEST VIA THE TELEPHONE *****

We’ve moved to a new HUB!

We would like to inform all our patients that we are moving HUBS from 1st July 2020.

Our new hub will be located at:

Poplars Surgery

17 Holly Ln,

Erdington

Birmingham

B24 9JN

 Appointments at Poplars Surgery must be booked in advance through your own GP practice (Reservoir Road Surgery) and are available with a range of clinicians including GP's, nurses and health care assistants. Please ask a receptionist for further information.

Following NHS guidelines all of our GP appointments are being converted to telephone consultations as of 17/03/2020

If the GP feels that they need to have a face to face consultation with you they will book an appointment to do so.

Prescriptions can be requested online or via email: reservoir.roadsurgery@nhs.net

If you have not yet nominated a pharmacy for your prescriptions to be sent to, you may want to consider doing this now. We will continue to provide updates to our patients via our website.

***DUE TO CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) STARTING MONDAY 16TH MARCH 2020 WE WILL NO LONGER BE ACCEPTING WALK-IN APPOINTMENTS/BOOK ON THE DAY.

YOU MUST PHONE THE SURGERY TO MAKE AN APPOINTMENT. WE WILL HAVE 4 LINES IN USE TO ANSWER ALL CALLS. THE RECEPTIONISTS WILL NEED TO FOLLOW PROTOCOL IN BOOKING APPOINTMENTS BY ASKING YOU A SERIES OF QUESTIONS BEFORE THEY CAN BOOK AN APPOINTMENT***

Out of Hours  
Always telephone - 465 2950.  The out-of-hours service is for emergencies only, when the surgery is closed

Home Visits
Requests for home visits should be made before 10am where possible, by telephoning 465 2950. The receptionists will ask you for the reason for the visit; this is to allow the doctor to assess the urgency.

Test Results
If you have had a blood test, urine check etc, you will be asked to either telephone or come to the surgery for the result. Unless the doctor has told you to call before, please try us after 1.00 pm on 465 2948.

 Extended Access 

COMMENCING 6TH JULY 2019 THE SURGERY WILL BE OPEN ON A SATURDAY FROM 8.30 AM-12 PM FOR BOTH ROUTINE AND EMERGENCY APPOINTMENTS                   

Please ask a receptionist for further information.

Social Prescribing clinics - Fridays from March 2019 -

Please speak to Reception if you can benefit from this. 

 Blood tests

NHS England have therefore issued guidance to GPs that all non-urgent blood tests should be halted.

Anyone who needs a test for urgent health problems will still get one, but where your clinician recommends that it’s safe to do so, then you may be asked to come back for a test at a later date, or your appointment may be rescheduled. 

Given the nature of the shortage, we cannot give an exact date for when the test will be rescheduled, but please be assured that if your condition or symptoms require it, then you will get a test, and we will be re-booking your test when supplies become more easily available.

 If your condition or symptoms change or get worse, please contact the NHS as you would normally.

 

Online Services

Why Use Online Access?

The online services, such as Patient Access and The NHS App, helps you to be more in control of your health. Through it you can view your medical record, manage appointments, order prescriptions and even manage any hospital referrals we make.

This is obviously very confidential information, so we will need to check your identity (for simple prescription and appointment management, and from April 2022 access to new information in your record, the NHSApp registration sorts this).

There are a few times when we won't grant access: for example if we are concerned about potential coercion and for young people aged 11-15. For children under 11, parents can register for so-called "proxy" access; from 16, young people can get access for themselves. However, for young people aged 11 - 15, we would want to chat about what is the right sort of access to protect young people's right to confidentiality.

Accelerated Access to Online Records

You may be aware that NHS England have determined that from 01 Nov 22 all patients will have complete prospective access to their medical records,

with surgeries being required to enable this en masse. This instruction also includes automatically provisioning prospective access for patients who turn 16 years of age.

We are advocates of patients having access to their medical records and encourage this, especially to view test results rather than ring the surgery. In fact 43% of our population have some form of online access, either to book appointments or order medication and 25% are able to view elements of their medical records. So, whilst we support the principle of patient access, we are currently providing access in a manner that we determine to be safe ( i.e with third party data redacted) in order to minimise the risk of data breaches pertaining to other individuals, named in patient records.

We also have significant concerns about the risks relating to safeguarding of vulnerable adults and children, and the risk of harm (up to and including loss of life, particularly femicide) that may result if/when patient data is revealed to third parties under coercion or threat. Under the current planned changes to the system, when a patient moves surgery, there is no guarantee that any redaction will transfer also, thus increasing risk. These concerns have been raised with NHS England and we have yet to receive a satisfactory response.

We therefore regret to advise that, in light of the current lack of ability to enable mass online access to patient records safely, we are unable to comply with NHS England’s plan, for fear of the consequences to our most vulnerable patients.

The  BMA have provided us with guidance around our responsibilities as Data controllers. We WILL continue to enable individual-level patient access upon request, when we are sure the notes concerned have been appropriately checked and safely redacted and that by providing access, you or others will come to no harm. We trust in your understanding and are happy to discuss this with any patients as needed. You can find further information about how to use the NHSapp

Under the terms of the Data Protection Act 1998 patients have a statutory right to access paper or electronic clinical records or any other information held about them.  Please ask reception for a copy of our Access to Medical Records Policy.  

If you do require access to your records, an application must be made in writing, or on the form available from reception, to the Practice Manager.