Meon Mythbusting

Welcome to Meon Mythbusting

from our GP Partners and Management Team

We’d like to explain more about how things work here at the Practice. Here we respond to real comments made to our reception staff in a series of ‘myth busters’….

myth #1

MYTH #1:

“I have sat in the waiting room and seen that you never answer the phone. It’s no wonder I can never get through!”

Our response:

  • All telephone calls made to Meon Health Practice are received by our dedicated telephone hub.
  • Our telephone hub is situated upstairs in our Highlands surgery in Fareham and isn’t visible from the patient waiting area.
  • Phone lines are open 8am – 6:30pm, Monday to Friday except bank holidays.
  • 10 patient advisers answers calls at peak times leaving our front desk reception staff available to assist patients at our surgeries.
picture of the Meon Health Practice telephone hub. This room has 10 desks, 5 on each side, with female staff sat at computer screens wearing headsets and taking calls from patients. A supervisor walks the room to support staff.
Meon Health Practice Telephone Hub – where all calls to the practice are taken (some staff faces have been blurred for privacy).
myth #2

MYTH #2:

“You all sit around doing nothing! If you worked harder the queue will get shorter!”

Our response:

  • Our staff work handle calls and enquiries throughout very busy shifts. Our receptionists do want to help you and try hard to direct you to the correct service.
  • Calls take time! We train our staff to ask you lots of questions to make sure we get quality, detailed information about your needs. Our Triage team use the information you have provided to determine the next steps for your care.
  • We still receive many enquiries about things that could be done by patients quickly online. We ask patients to visit our website when they need us to use our online services.
  • Please remember our staff are human! Sadly, we are needing to offer more breaks after increasing levels of abuse. Inevitably, this has a detrimental impact on staff retention and sickness rates.
An image of the Meon Health Practice triage team. In the picture is a office space with 2 doctors and admin staff working at desks with computers, processing appointment requests.
Triage GPs and admin staff processing medical requests from patients
Myth #3

MYTH #3:

“The practice is diabolical! You never have any appointments!”

Our response:

  • Our doctors can only see a set number of patients a day. The level of demand we receive often outweighs appointment slots available.
  • NHS budgets are limited and stretched. We are unable to expand our GP workforce or replace absent staff.
  • We must make sure we have clinicians available for patients who need to be seen urgently on the day they contact us. If we book too many future appointments for routine matters, we risk not being available for patients who have symptoms that require urgent attention from a doctor.
  • We provide many routine appointments with our other health professionals (nursing team, clinical pharmacists, musculoskeletal (MSK) practitioners and with our wellbeing team).