If the Surgery is closed you can access medical care in the following ways:

At nights, weekends and public holidays telephone 0845 045 0411

(after 6:30 p.m. and before 8:00 a.m. Monday to Friday and all day at weekends and public holidays)

If the surgery is closed at any other time (e.g. for staff training)  

telephone 0845 601 8803

Surgery Hours

The Banks Surgery provides services from Monday to Friday between 8:00 a.m. and 6:30p.m. excluding Bank Holidays. Emergency consultations are available throughout these times.

Routine consultations are by appointment usually between 08:30 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. Monday to Friday with the exception of Thursday when they are usually between 08:30 a.m. and 13:00. If  you need an appointment outside of these times please ask and we will try our best to accommodate you.

Extended Surgery Hours

Why are we not currently opening for the extended hours that the government have suggested?

The Government has said that it wants 50% of surgeries to open for extended hours (before 8:00 a.m. and beyond 6.30 p.m. Monday to Friday and at weekends). They have made it less well known that these additional opening hours would only be for routine, pre-bookable appointments. We already provide more appointments than we have demand for. The additional hours would not be for any emergency care or home visits which would still be carried out by the emergency service and walk-in-centre run by the PCT (Primary Care Trust).

The government have not offered any additional funding to pay staff for manning the surgery for these additional hours. That means that if we were to provide these additional hours for routine problems we would have to divert funding away from the other health care that we currently provide in order to pay for it. This could impinge upon the urgent and routine care that we currently give to people. This is something that we do not feel would be in the best interest of you, our patients.

We are continuing to monitor the situation and we are negotiating with the PCT to look at how we might resolve this issue. The PCT, however, have their options severely limited by the constraints that the government have put upon them. Constraints that are far more severe than those imposed in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Copyright © 2008 The Banks Surgery