Appointments

When you telephone the surgery the receptionist will take some brief details about yourself including the reason for your appointment. This helps our trained staff decide the best person to deal with your query.

Please be assured that our receptionists are under the same confidentiality laws as the doctors and nurses. Their role is to assess the problem and guide you to the best person to help you.

It is often possible for the doctor to advise and reassure you fully on the telephone or provide a prescription or sick note if necessary - saving you a visit to the surgery.

We offer a varied range of appointments, telephone consultations, pre bookable appointments with a specific doctor up to a week in advance, bookable appointments with a specific doctor on the same day and appointments on the same day on our shared GP clinic where you will see a doctor but we cannot guarantee which doctor you will see. 

GP Training Practice

We are also a training practice for 5th year students from Birmingham University. On occasions you may be offered an appointment with a medical student who will do the initial consultation. You will then be seen by one of the Doctors from the practice. You will always be given the opportunity to decide whether you wish to be seen by the medical student 

Home Visits

If possible please try to telephone before 10am. A doctor will phone you back as it may be that your problem can be dealt with by telephone advice, or that it would be more appropriate to send a District Nurse, or indeed arrange a hospital attendance. Home visits are only available for patients who are housebound because of illness or disability.

Please remember that several patients can be seen in the practice in the time that it takes to make one home visit. There are also better facilities for examining and treating patients at the surgery. 

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Long Lane Surgery - Home Visit Policy

These are our home visiting guidelines.

Visit recommended

We believe home visiting makes clinical sense and is the best way of giving a medical opinion in cases involving:-

• the terminally ill
• the truly housebound for whom travel to the surgery by car would cause a deterioration in their medical condition or unacceptable discomfort.

Visit may be useful

After an initial assessment over the telephone a seriously ill patient may be helped by a GP’s attendance.  However the GP may advise the patient, or person with the patient, to ring 999 to receive the appropriate immediate care.

Examples of such situations are:-

• heart attack
• severe shortness of breath
• severe blood loss

Visit is not usual

In most of the following cases, to visit would not be an appropriate use of a GP’s time:-

• common symptoms of childhood (fevers, cold, cough, earache, headache, diarrhoea/vomiting and most cases of abdominal pain). These patients are usually well enough to travel by car. It is not necessarily harmful to take a child with a fever outside. These children may not be fit to travel by 'bus or to walk, but car transport may be available from friends, relatives or taxi firms. It is not a doctor's responsibility to arrange such transport.
• adults with common problems (such as cough, sore throat, influenza, back pain and abdominal pain) are also readily transportable by car to a doctor's premises.
• common problems in the elderly (such as mobility problems, joint pain and general malaise) would also best be treated by consultation at a doctor's premises.