Routine Appointments

Posted on October 26th, 2023

In August, the surgery had changed its appointment release dates from a three weekly schedule to being released every week. This was after concerns of patient waiting times for appointments being long.

However, over the last couple months, we have seen that our demand for appointments are too high for this to work efficiently. Our routine appointments were fully booked after a couple of hours on a Wednesday. Which meant many of our patients struggled in getting the appointments they required.

Following this, we have now reverted to a bi-weekly schedule after trialling appointment release schedules. Appointments will be released fortnightly on a Wednesday. Please see schedule below on which dates appointments will be released.

Our appointments are released in two batches on a Wednesday. Morning appointments between 08:30 – 13:30 are released at 8am. Afternoon appointments between 13:30 – 18:30 are released from 1pm. If you have a preferred time for your appointment, please call either morning or afternoon, depending on your preference.

Having two weeks of appointments released at once will give our patients the ability to book for the appointments they need, throughout the week, rather than them all being booked on the day of release. It will also reduce our telephone waiting times as there is a higher availability of appointments.

There is a one week gap where appointments are not released to avoid all appointments going in one go.

We hope that you understand why this change has been made and will see the positive that this change will bring to the appointment system for Parkwood Surgery.