Appointments

If you need help with a non-urgent medical or admin request and do not need an appointment, please contact us online. You can do this even when the surgery is closed.

Telephone Ripon (01765) 690666

You can make an appointment at the reception desk at the following times:

By Telephone

Monday to Friday 8.00am to 6.00pm

Please note telephone calls to our receptionists are recorded for training purposes

In Person

Monday to Friday 8.00am to 6.30pm

Online booking is also possible. Scroll down for details.

You may be asked to come to the surgery for your appointment. The surgery is well equipped for examinations and treatment, and, of course, your full medical records are to hand. Surgery consultations with either your doctor or the nurse are by appointment only. Or, you may be offered a telephone consultation with the doctor.

You can request a chaperone to be present during your appointment. Your GP or nurse may arrange for one to be present. As this will be a trained staff member notice may be needed.

Our Appointment System

A new contract was imposed on GP Practices by the NHS in April. It states that ‘Offer of assessment will be equitable for all modes of access: To ensure consistency in the access that patients can expect, the GP contract will be updated to make clear that patients should be offered an assessment of need, or signposted to an appropriate service, at first contact with the practice. Practices will therefore no longer be able to request that patients contact the practice at a later time’

After careful consideration, we have decided to implement an appointment system that will allow us to comply with this new contract, while continuing to provide the best possible care for our patients.

Under the new system, the majority of appointments will be on the day appointments. Patients will be offered an initial telephone consultation with a Clinician on the same day that they make contact with the Surgery. After the initial call, if the Clinician feels the patient will benefit from a face to face consultation they will be offered an appointment on the day.

One of the benefits of this system is that our Reception Team will try to book you in with the Clinician that has been seeing you for a particular issue, which will help with continuity. Of course for various reasons, this may not always be possible.

It is important that we all work together to make this a success. We ask that you are patient with our Reception Team, especially during this transition period. Patients will need to call on a day that they know they are available to attend an appointment if it is deemed necessary. Our hope is that you can call on the day that you would like to speak to a Dr and are free to attend an appointment, and we can offer you a telephone consultation and a subsequent face to face appointment if it is deemed necessary, on the day. Please remember that we are working with the same amount of resources while trying to offer you more appointments, so we will not be able to offer an appointment to everyone that requests one on the day. The contract stipulates that patients should be offered an assessment of need. Therefore there will be a triaging Clinician as well who will assess patient’s clinical needs and either offer appointments to those who really need to see or speak to a GP or signpost patients to a service that is more appropriate for their needs. Remember there are other Services including a Minor Eye Service, a Social Prescriber, Pharmacy Team and First Contact Physiotherapists. Some patients may be signposted to their local Pharmacy or given advice on self care. If a Clinician has advised that you will need follow up, please call within the time frame that has been advised and we will try to maintain consistency by booking you in with the same Clinician.

There will still be some appointments that we are allowed to book in advance for pre-planned 'procedures', such as joint injections, baby checks, HGV medicals, new patient health checks.

We are still able to offer routine appointments on a Saturday as part of the Enhanced Scheme. These appointments can be booked via our reception team, and the appointment will be with a Clinician based at Ripon Hospital who will have full access to you records.

Remember that patients can also use online consultations, which allow you to submit your request 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. These are reviewed by clinicians within 24 hours Monday to Friday.

We appreciate that these are uncertain times but we are positive that by working together, we can provide the care that you need, with the right person, at the right time. No system will be perfect and we will continue to review the system as we go along and make any necessary changes.

Self Check-in For Booked Appointments

We have installed an automated self-check-in system near the reception desk. This allows you to check in automatically for your appointment, by using your date of birth or your fingerprint. Staff will be on hand to help you use it and register your fingerprint if you prefer this method.

Booking Via The Internet

If you wish, you can book an appointment with your GP online. To use this method we must first issue you with a password. Please call the surgery or enquire at the practice reception desk for further details. Please restrict online bookings to simple, 10-minute appointments only. It is not yet possible to make complex appointments via the internet, i.e double appointments, such as 20 minutes with the doctor, appointments for cervical smears or joint injections with the GP. We hope this service will be available in the future.

For those patients who already have a password, please click on the link below to book your appointment.

To use this method we must first issue you with a password.

Please call the surgery or enquire at the reception desk for details.

SystmOnline - access online services

If you're a patient at our practice you can now use the NHS App, a simple and secure way to access a range of NHS services on your smartphone or tablet.

You can use the NHS App to check your symptoms and get instant advice, book appointments, order repeat prescriptions and view your GP medical record and more.

For more information go to www.nhs.uk/nhsapp

Home Visits

Telephone Ripon (01765) 690666

At our surgery, we are fortunate to have the necessary equipment and facilities to ensure safe and effective examination and treatment. For instance, having electronic access to patient notes significantly reduces the possibility of prescribing errors. While we understand that home visits can be important, they tend to be time-consuming and may limit our ability to assist a larger number of patients at the surgery.

However, we do accommodate housebound patients—those who are completely unable to leave their home even with assistance

If you believe a home visit is necessary, we kindly ask where possible, that you contact reception before 10:30 a.m. Late requests may require the doctor to leave their scheduled appointments, which can affect the care of other patients.

To support our GPs and Nurses in prioritizing visits, all requests for home visits will be triaged by a member of our team, usually the Duty GP. Your GP will assess the urgency of the visit, (please be aware that a request for a home visit does not mean that one will be undertaken if the GP thinks it inappropriate)

We appreciate your cooperation in providing relevant details when making this request. If you are calling on behalf of a patient, we kindly request that you leave your name and mobile number, as we will need to speak with you to gather more information before confirming any arrangements.

We must note that we are unable to provide home visits for patients who are unable to attend the surgery due to transport issues or childcare

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.