Improving Waiting Times

We strongly recommend you call the clinic prior to your appointment to check if your GP is running on time.

The doctors and staff at Brighton Family & Women's Clinic would like to work together with our patients to improve waiting times. We realise that at times our doctors can run behind with their appointments and we apologise if you have to wait longer than usual. Sometimes emergencies can arise, which cause the doctors to run late or sometimes people just require extra time. We hope you understand that doctors do not like to rush their patients.

Our doctors & staff have made the following commitment:

• To start on time and work as efficiently as possible.
• To keep at least one appointment free per session for catching up time.
• To request those patients with complex or multiple issues or those with more than one family member to reschedule, so that others are not kept waiting.
• Our receptionists will endeavour to call patients if the doctor is running late.

We would ask our patients to help in the following areas:

• We strongly recommend you call the clinic prior to your appointment to check if your GP is running on time. Whilst we endeavour to call patients, this is not always possible. When making your appointment, the receptionist may ask you to call ahead on the day to check the waiting time. This is for your benefit and may save you waiting unnecessarily.
• We are happy to see more than one family member but please ensure that you have made an appointment for each person prior to attending. Seeing extra patients takes extra time and keeps other patients waiting.
• A standard consultation is 15 minutes. If you require a Pap smear, have more than one issue to discuss or a complex problem, please advise the receptionist that you require a long consultation so that more time will be made available for you. You will only be charged for the time taken, whether it is less or more than the time booked in.
• Please advise your doctor of ALL the issues you wish to discuss at the start of the consultation.
• Please be on time for your appointment unless you have been advised that the doctor is running late. If you are late, it means all the subsequent patients will be kept waiting.
• Please notify us if you are unable to keep your appointment within a reasonable time (min. 2 hours) so that we can use the appointment for someone who may need urgent attention.
• Please ensure we have your current contact details including mobile phone number (on the day of your appointment, please leave your phone on) in case we need to contact you.
• If you have been sitting in our waiting room for longer than 15 minutes, please ask the receptionist to check that your arrival has been entered on the computer.

We hope that this team approach can help to improve waiting times for our patients.