*The Coronavirus*
If you are concerned you may have coronavirus please use the following link which contains a symptom checker as well as advice on what you should do next:
https://111.nhs.uk/covid-19
If you believe you may have coronavirus you should not attend the surgery, hospital or a pharmacy, you should instead following the advice given in the above link.
We do not have any access to covid testing.
Guidance on shielding and protecting people defined on medical grounds as extremely vulnerable from Covid19 can be found here
Booking of appointments
In order to protect our patients and staff we have temporarily turned off the online booking option for appointments. The Meads team will now be asking all patients for the reason for their appointments before a telephone/ video appointment will be allocated. If you are invited into the surgery to attend an appointment we respectfully ask you not to bring additional people (for example, siblings, both parents etc) unless this is specifically needed for frailty/ other reasons. If you develop a cough or fever before your scheduled appointment please do not visit the surgery but instead self-isolate at home for 14 days.
You may be asked a number of additional questions by our team when booking your appointment and we ask for your patience with this. We are working very hard to protect everybodys' best interests.
Suspension of most routine annual reviews and blood tests
We are postponing all annual reviews which can not be conducted via telephone or video call. If any of our patients with long term conditions are feeling unwell they should call the surgery as they would normally. Regrettably it is necessary for us to postpone all non urgent blood tests, non urgent minor surgery, procedures and referrals. If it has been necessary to postpone your appointment we will make contact with you as soon as possible to inform you of this. Please bear with us as we are experiencing a significant number of inbound calls which restricts our ability to make outbound calls as quickly as we would like.
Childhood immunisations
It is Public Health's recommendation that children are still bought in to the surgery for their usual childhood immunisations. These will be available via booked appointment only. The 6 week baby check will now be aligned with the baby's 8 week immunisation appointment so that only one visit to the surgery is required. Only one parent (and no siblings) should be bought to this appointment. You should only attend the appointment if completely well and no signs of a cough or temperature.
Temperature screening on arrival at the surgery
In order to protect staff and patients we are now checking people's temperatures using an ear thermometer on their arrival at the surgery. If you have a temperature of 37.8 degrees or above you will be asked to wait outside of the surgery until a Clinician is able to telephone you. We trust that everybody will understand our reasoning for this and will cooperate fully. All staff are recording their temperatures on arrival at work.
Sickness certificates/ letters from the surgery
All MED3 (sick notes)/ letters requested from the practice will need to be emailed to patients; in exceptional circumstances these will be sent to patients via post. You will be asked for your email address when requesting any documentation from the surgery.
Prescriptions
Please continue to call NHS Prescription Ordering Direct (the POD) to order any prescriptions. The freephone number for POD is 0808 164 7678. Prescriptions will be issued to pharmacies directly and in line with their usual expected request dates. We respectfully ask you not to request medication any earlier than you would normally and not to request items that you do not need because you may be feeling concerned about levels of supply. If people begin stockpiling medicines or over ordering then this is likely to cause detrimental supply issues.
To reduce the workload for our doctors the practice is collaborating with NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBA) which is providing NHS numbers for those patients that may be suitable for electronic repeat dispensing prescriptions. The information is obtained from NHS prescriptions submitted to the NHSBA. A member of our clinical team will contact these patients soon to explain the benefits of this service.
Travel appointments
There will no longer be any 'travel' appointments available at the surgery until further notice.
A few words of thanks....
We would like to thank our patients for the encouraging words of support we have received and for cooperating with the above provisions which have been established to protect everybody’s interests. The partners and practice manager are extremely proud of the Meads team and we would like to take this opportunity to thank them publicly for their continued professionalism and dedication to their work. We are prepared, we have policies and procedures in place for different situations and are adopting these stringently.