On behalf of Firdale Medical Centre I would like to thank our patients for your support over the past years as the practice has been undergoing organisational changes including introduction of new staff members, new electronic systems, new telephony and most importantly our total triage patient model.

We know from the results of various surveys we collected over the past 2 years including recent GP Survey and Practice Survey (July 2025) that the changes introduced had a positive effect on our service delivery and the positive feedback from our patients is a testament to that.

I thought I would share some of the findings to show what we achieved so far:

90% of our patients feel they had good experience with Firdale Medical Centre.

93% knew what the next step would be after contacting us.

95% felt our reception and admin team were helpful.

88% of our patients feel that the Patient Triage system improved access and services we deliver.

New Telephony System

We have introduced new telephony system in 2024 and since can see improvements in feedback relating to contacting our practice on the phone.

We receive close to 4000 calls per month and respond to over 95% of those calls without the need of patient call back.

The system allows you to choose an automatic callback which keeps your place in the queue and will call you back when our reception team becomes available.

We answer calls on average withing 40 seconds and although sometimes our patients wait longer not many are affected and we always encourage you to use the call back facility to avoid the wait.

Triage System / Appointments

Our electronic triage system completely reshaped the way we deliver care at Firdale. It not only allows precise care navigation led by experienced GP but also improves our efficiency and allows us to save over 30% of previously inappropriately booked clinical appointments.

We receive on average over 100 patient initiated medical enquiries every day.

We deliver over 3300 clinical appointments per month – 40659 in the past 365 days. (this number does not include main vaccination campaigns such as flu and covid). We also log almost 3000 separate patient related clinical admin activities each month 35979 in the past 365 days.

Those are delivered by the team of highly dedicated doctors, nurses, healthcare assistant, MSK first contact practitioners and counsellors and supported by the equally dedicated team of administrators and members of reception team.

Our patient’s population stands currently at 11358 and has grown by 2000 since 2020. According to forecast by 2034 our patient’s population will exceed 15000 and to cater for this increase we are in the process of converting part of the administration office space to clinical rooms which will allow us to further expand our clinical team.

Changes to General Practice Contract (October 2025)

From 1^st of October all practices are required to facilitate patient contact within core opening hours (8am – 6.30pm). This contact must be available in three ways: in person, by telephone and online. As you know Firdale’s doors and telephone lines have been open within those hours for many years, but to safely manage the clinical triage of medical enquiries we currently stop clinical requests when we reach safe capacity.

Following the changes on the 1^st October we will need to continue with an online option. We will endeavour to provide a full online service however, due to the clinical input to appropriately process your medical enquiries we may have to limit the range of services available at some times of the day to ensure our clinicians are working withing their safe capacity.

Please continue accessing your doctors’ services responsibly and where possible using other available services such as community pharmacy, opticians before reaching out to us.

Please also have a look at the You and Your General Practice NHS commitment which will tell you what to expect for us and how you can help.