Our Fair Use Policy: Helping Us Help You
At our practice, we are fully committed to giving you the best possible care. To make sure every patient can access our team when they need us, we ask everyone to use our appointments, phone lines, and online consultation platform fairly and responsibly.
When resources are used unfairly, it means another patient who genuinely needs a doctor or healthcare professional might miss out.
How You Can Help Us
Be patient with response times: Please submit only one online request per medical issue, including as much detail as you can. Sending multiple messages or chasing updates won't speed up your reply, but it does create a backlog for our staff.
Keep or cancel appointments: If you can’t make it to an appointment, please let us know as early as possible so we can give that slot to someone else.
Give us time for prescriptions: Please allow at least 48 hours for us to process repeat prescriptions.
Consider other options for minor issues: For minor illnesses, please think about using self-care, a local pharmacy, or NHS 111.
See the right professional: A GP isn't always the only person who can help. Our practice team includes many different specialists who might be better suited to your needs.
Home visits are for the housebound: Please only request a home visit if you are physically too ill to leave the house. All requests will be checked by phone first.
Keep your details updated: Let us know right away if you change your name, address, or phone number.
Our Promise to You
We will always treat you with dignity, respect, and complete confidentiality.
We will offer you care based on your medical needs.
We will keep you informed about our services and any delays (emergencies happen, and sometimes appointments run late—we appreciate your patience when they do!).
We welcome your feedback and have a confidential complaints procedure if you ever feel we’ve fallen short.
What We Mean by "Unfair Use"
We want to support everyone, but we will step in if a patient’s behaviour makes it hard for us to care for others safely. Examples of unfair use include:
Sending an unreasonable or excessive number of online consultation requests.
Any form of abuse, bullying, or harassment toward our staff.
What happens if the policy is broken?
If someone is using our services unfairly, we will contact them to discuss it. However, if the behaviour doesn't change, we reserve the right to review or limit how they access our services.
Zero Tolerance on Abuse
We have a strict zero-tolerance policy for verbal or physical abuse. In rare cases where a patient's behaviour is completely unreasonable and destroys the trust between them and our team, we may have to remove them from our practice list.
If we ever need to take this step, we will always discuss the issue with the patient first, try to find a solution, and—if removal is necessary—make sure they have the information they need to safely register with a new GP practice.