We have two types of doctors appointments at New Barn Close Surgery, same day appointments and pre-bookable appointments.

We also offer a combination of bookable face-to-face (F2F) appointments and remote telephone/video consultations. The ratio of F2F to telephone consultations is 1:1. But we also have free F2F slots available for those patients whose initial remote telephone appointment requires a F2F appointment.

All appointment types can be booked via our reception team or via Patient Access or NHS111.

We also have a range of other appointment types that our reception team may direct you towards. These are appointments with colleagues who work with us who will be more appropriate people to deal with your issue. These include:

Pharmacist - for medication reviews and queries

First Contact Physiotherapist - for acute musculoskeletal aches and pains/minor injuries

Paramedic - minor illness

Care Co-ordinator - who can help with social care issues, care agencies etc...

Well Being Advisor - Mental Health issues

Please utilise these roles, as they are often the most appropriate people to speak to rather than the GPs and practice nurses.

Same-day Telephone Appointments

We have same-day appointments, which are released at 8:30am each morning.

Same-day appointments can be arranged by ringing the surgery at 8.30am, as the appointments do go very quickly.

Our reception team have been instructed to ask you for a general reason as to why you need an appointment. This is to ensure that you are triaged to the correct appointment type and with the correct person. 

All patients with "acute respiratory" symptoms will automatically get triaged to a telephone appointment rather than a F2F appointment. This is to reduce the accidental exposure of Covid-19 to staff and other patients.

Once you have arranged a same-day telephone appointment  with one of our receptionists, your GP will call you, either in the morning or the afternoon, depending on what time you contacted us. We do not have specific times for when the Doctor will call you, however you can let the receptionist know if there is a certain time that does not suit you. If the doctor wishes to see you following a telephone call, he/she will arrange a mutually convenient appointment with you.

Face-to-face appointments can be pre-booked and we have urgent appointments available on the day. Please note, we have a limited amount of these appointments and they are reserved for problems that cannot wait or are urgent and require the Doctors’ immediate attention on that day. 

The appointments line is extremely busy at these times, so please hold and we will answer your call as soon as possible.

Pre-bookable Appointments

Pre-bookable F2F or telephone appointments can be made weeks in advance. These are for matters that are not urgent and can wait until your chosen GP is available. This may include medication reviews, to discuss non-urgent test results or referrals.

You can ring the surgery at any time to make a pre-bookable appointment for a telephone conversation or, if appropriate, a face-to-face appointment. You can choose to have either a morning or afternoon call/appointment. Please be aware, there is roughly a two-week wait for these appointments, which varies depending on the Doctors’ schedule.

You are welcome to use our online appointment booking system as an alternative to our other appointment options. These appointments are arranged through Patient Access which can be accessed via the link at the top of this page.

Please call the surgery to arrange a Nurses appointment during our opening times. Please see our services page to see what services our nurses provide.

As part of our Enhanced Access service, we’re making more routine appointments available with members of our PCN outside of our core opening hours. These appointments will be available from 1st October 2022 and are provided from 6:30pm-8pm Monday to Friday and 9am-5pm on a Saturday. 

To make it easy to access care that works for you, we’ve tried wherever possible to offer our patients Enhanced Access appointments. 

These appointments are pre-bookable by contacting the surgery during our opening times - when calling please ask for "an Enhanced Access appointment" and our receptionists will help you to find a convenient appointment.

Patients are requested, where possible, to telephone before 11am if a home visit is required that day.

Home visits are only possible for those patients who are genuinely housebound (ie. never leave the house for ANY reason) or whose acute problems renders them completely housebound.

We would request that, apart from the genuinely housebound, all other patients attend the surgery rather than request a home visit because of the extra time home visiting takes. On average four to five patients can be seen in surgery in the time it takes to do a single house call. In addition, the care that can be offered due to the lack of adequate lighting, examination facilities and equipment means that you may not receive as good a service as the doctor may be able to offer if you came to the surgery.

Please note that the doctor may telephone you rather than visit you if this is medically appropriate. Ultimately it is the doctors right to decide whether or not a visit is appropriate for a particular set of circumstances. It is not possible to request a particular Doctor for a house visit as currently it falls to the duty Doctor on that day.

New Barn Close Surgery has been a teaching practice for medical students since 2008. Dr John Hughes and Dr Emma Billings are the tutors for final year medical students from the Medical School of Birmingham University.

It is a real privilege to have some responsibility for the training of the next generation of doctors, and patients too can do their bit in helping train tomorrow's doctors. 

We have students with us regularly throughout the year for a 5 week training block. If you have an appointment to see Dr Billings or Dr Hughes during that time, you may be asked if you would mind seeing our medical student. You would always see the GP as well.

We have an excellent reputation and are still in contact with some of our previous students. We get excellent feedback from the University and from our patients. Please help us to continue this important work.

https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/undergraduate/courses/med/medicine.aspx

In November 2021, Dr John Hughes completed his training to become a "GP Trainer".

We are delighted that we will now be able to have GP Specialist Registrars working with us over a 3 year cycle.

We will start each cycle by having an ST1 Registrar for 4 months, followed by and ST2 Registrar for 8 months. We then have our original ST1 registrar back with us for a whole ST3 year leading up to their final qualification as fully qualified GP.

These registrars are not medical students. They are fully qualified doctors who have completed 5 years in medical school and then at least 2 further years as Foundation Year junior doctors working in a variety of hospital and community specialties.

They have then chosen General Practice as their career and their training programme is a further 3 years alernating between placements in hospitals and primary care.

Our role as educators and as a training practice is to ensure they are adequately equipped for a life as an independant practitioner. 

It is a very exciting role, please help support us.

To cancel any appointment you have booked at the Surgery, you can do this through the NHS APP or Patient Access, rather than calling reception.

Even if the appointment hasn't been booked online and has been arranged through reception, you can cancel your appointent following these instructions:

Cancel Appointment - NHS APP

To cancel in your NHS App:

1. Go to Appointments.
2. Select Your GP appointments.
3. Under Your upcoming appointments, select the appointment you want to cancel.
4. Then select Cancel this appointment.

Your GP surgery may stop accepting online cancellations if it's too close to the appointment time. If you cannot cancel your appointment online, contact your surgery.

Cancel Appointment – Patient Access

If you need to cancel an appointment, follow the steps below.

Do one of the following:

Cancel directly from the Upcoming appointments section of the homepage.

1. Select the appointment from the Upcoming appointments section.
2. Select Cancel appointment. 
3. Enter the reason for cancelling the appointment.
4. Select Cancel appointment.

Cancel from the Appointments section.

1. Select YourAppointments from the dashboard. 
2. Locate and select the appointment you wish to cancel, or select
   in the top right-hand corner of the upcoming appointment.
3. Select Cancel appointment.
4. Enter the reason for cancelling the appointment.
5. Select Cancel appointment. 

The appointment has been cancelled.