At Heathcote we believe in a personal list system, which helps establish and maintain a good relationship with your GP. This also helps to maintain continuity of care. If your problem is urgent, or your doctor is unavailable, you will be offered an appointment with one of our associates.

Our telephone lines open at 8.30am, and are open through to 6pm. For routine appointments, please phone after 11am.

Many problems can be dealt with more conveniently and quickly by a telephone consultation with a doctor, rather than having to attend the surgery. If no appointments are available, you may choose this option. The doctor can then speak with you and give advice, arrange an appointment with themself or another doctor, or with a nurse or healthcare assistant.

Requests for visits should normally be made before 10.30am so that the doctors may plan their day. Patients will be seen quicker if they can attend the surgery. Patients requesting a home visit will be rung by the doctor to assess the urgency of the problem and to discuss the most appropriate care. Telephone advice may be sufficient

Our professional organisations advise us that for medico-legal and confidentiality reasons, GP's are currently unable to engage in correspondence with our patients using e-mail and we do ask you to be aware of this policy. We anticipate this will change in future years, but in the meantime we must insist on patients using the other channels available