Coronavirus: Latham House GP appointments to be conducted by telephone

There will no longer be a walk-in service and all visitors to the surgery will be triaged by staff on their arrival.

Those with an urgent need to be seen can arrange an appointment but they must call the practice beforehand to arrange it.

Child immunisations are continuing at the practice but attendance is limited to one parent and one child.

Kate Hunter, executive manager at Latham House, said: “We are doing our best to contact patients who were expecting to attend their routine appointments this week and to keep patients informed.

“The key message is, please follow NHS guidance and stay at home if you have either symptom described, please do not attend your routine GP or nurse appointments as these will now be telephone consultations.

“We will be triaging everyone who attends the practice.

“This will involve extra time and we respectfully ask patients to bear with us during this initial phase.”

Paper prescriptions should no longer be dropped off at the practice and patients are instead asked to register for Electronic Prescriptions service (EPS) so medication can be given out in an automated system.

Patients need to email [email protected] with their name, date of birth, address and the name of the pharmacy where they would like to collect their prescriptions from and Latham House will reply to confirm this is all organised.

Go online at www.LHMP.co.uk for more information about prescriptions at the surgery.

The practice say all minor operations and vasectomies are planned to continue as normal.

Mrs Hunter added: “These are unprecedented times, as a result we have a Covid-19 task group who meet daily to ensure we adjust our operations to ensure we are responding to the latest information shared by the NHS and continue to provide a duty of care to our patients and staff at this time.

“The changes we are implementing to our operations are proposed to support our intent to stay open and to keep caring for our community and patients as best we can.”

We rerported earlier in the week that telephone appointments with doctors and nurses were also now being held at rural surgeries in the Melton area, at Long Clawson Surgery, Croxton Kerrial (Stackyard) Surgery and Woolsthorpe-by-Belvoir Surgery, which are all part of the Vale Medical Group.

A summary of the changes at Latham House:

**ALL patients visiting the Practice will be triaged by Latham House staff on arrival;

**All of routine GP appointments will be changed to telephone consultations for the foreseeable future. Your GP will advise you of next steps on the phone should they wish to book a face to face follow up appointment with you;

**If you have an urgent need on the day please phone the Practice on 01664 503000 to make an on the day appointment. Latham House will not be operating a walk-in service;

**All routine appointments with a nurse or health care professional will be changed to telephone consultations as of tomorrow (Thursday);

**Child Immunisations will go ahead following the triage on arrival process. The practice is restricting attendance to these appointments to one parent and the child only. This is for the safety of everyone.

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All residents are being advised to stay at home (self-isolate) without any testing for COVID-19, regardless of travel history or contact with confirmed cases, if they have:

a. A new continuous cough OR

b. High temperature (of 37.8 degrees centigrade or higher).

If you have either of these symptoms, Latham House is requesting that patients do not visit the surgery even if they have an appointment.

Patients should call the surgery on 01664 503000 and a clinician will call them back and advise further.

**Individuals should stay at home (self-isolate) for 7 days from the onset of symptoms

following the current advice.

**If you live with other people, they should stay at home for 14 days from the day the first person got symptoms.

**If someone has serious symptoms they cannot manage at home they should use NHS 111 online or call NHS 111.

**After 7 days of self-isolation, people who feel better and no longer have a high temperature can return to their normal routine.

Visit https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/ for updated information.

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