Online Service – Frequently Asked Questions

If you are contacting us about a medical issue this service is only available from 8am and runs through to 5pm on Monday to Fridays only. However if you have a non – medical query or question to ask, this can be submitted at any time, 365 days a year. Please note that the ‘any time’ queries and questions will only be seen and actioned during normal Monday to Friday working hours.

Kidderminster Medical Centre is committed to protecting our patient’s information and would not have used this service if its use compromised this commitment.

Yes you can. Simply open the NHS App as you would normally. When open click ‘Advice’ on the bottom menu bar and then scroll down the page until you see ‘Ask your GP for medical advice’. Then click on ‘Ask your GP for medical advice’ which takes you to our Online Services which are provided by AccuRX Limited.

Whilst the large majority of our appointments are only available via our Online Service there are still some specific ones you can make using the NHS App.

Whilst the large majority of our appointments are only available via our Online Service there are still some specific ones you can make using Patient Access. These typically would be for Cervical Smear (Invite only), ECG, LTC Diabetes or HCA, NHS Health Check and Phlebotomy/Blood Test appointments. Please note all of these named appointments can also be easily requested using our recommended Online Services.

Both the NHS App and Patient Access are particularly good for requesting repeat prescriptions. However if you have a question or concerns about your current prescriptions we recommend you raise these with us by using our Online Services.

This can be a bit confusing for first time users but easily solved. On the ‘What would you like help with’ page simply click on ‘I want help for a medical Issue’ which then takes you to a short series of questions, which when completed, allows you to request an appointment. Please note that when your request is received our inhouse specialist team (often referred to as a Triage team) will determine the best course of action and will get back to you as soon as they can to arrange next steps.

We are pleased to advise that our inhouse specialist team (the triage team) is based in the Kidderminster Medical Centre and has GP’s, advanced nurse practitioners, physician associates, pharmacist’s and support staff within its numbers. Their job, from the information you supply us, is to determine the best way for us to manage your request for assistance or help. By the way, the word ‘triage’ originated in France and its meaning dates from the First World War, with reference to the military system of assessing the wounded on the battlefield.

Quite simply, as much as you can. From what you tell us we want to ensure that we can help you in the best possible way and just saying ‘I have a cough’ isn’t particularly useful. However, tell us something about when it occurs, its type, whether it’s productive or not, whether you have other pre-existing conditions such as asthma, etc, and we can make a more considered response in determining the best way to treat you. The more you tell us, the more accurate and targeted our response will be.

This is up to you. If you feel the two, or more, problems are connected it may well be best to raise them together. However if one problem is a medical issue that you want advice on and the other problem is an administration issue then raising them separately would be helpful.

If, for whatever reason, our Online Services is temporarily unavailable then you will still be able to contact us by telephone or by coming into our reception.

In the unlikely event that 2 working days go by, or you are worrying about us not yet having got back to you, you can contact us by telephone or by coming into our reception to ask for an update.

We will get back to you by either text or phone but not by email. As one of the questions in completing your request to us you will be asked how you want to be contacted – by text or by phone.

Answer – TBC

If your condition is considerably worse and you are concerned it may be life threatening, do not delay, call 999. In the more likely case that it is not life threatening, but that you are feeling worse, you could again use our Online Services to advise us of this or alternatively you could phone us or, if well enough, come in to talk to one of our receptionists.

Don’t worry, if this is the case just do what you have always done – either phone us or come in to talk to one of our receptionists.

There are ways that you can be shown how to use our Online Services. Possibly the simplest way is to ask a trusted friend or a member of the family to show you how to use it. Until you press the ‘Submit Request’ button nothing comes through to the Medical Centre so you can take your time looking at the few questions and different pages even entering ‘rubbish’ data so you can progress through each screen page.

It all depends upon your personal circumstances in that you may be able to use Online Services either by yourself or with the help of a trusted friend or a member of your family. If however, you can not use our Online Services you will still be able to contact us in the ways that you have always done so.

An option is for a trusted friend or a member of the family to use Online Services on their behalf. One of the questions is as to whether the request is for yourself or someone else. If this is answered for someone else a page comes up asking for details of who is making the request and who the request is for.

If this is unfortunately the case, we can still be contacted by them phoning or coming in to talk to one of our receptionists.

Importantly yes. Online Services is designed to allow  parent’s entering requests for their children, for adults entering requests for their aged families and carers raising them for the people they are caring for.

You are welcome to telephone us or come into the surgery – our reception team will take the information which is passed to our clinical triage team in the same format as the online forms – so all the requests are dealt with in the same way. We will arrange an appointment to suit your needs based on the information given.

When using our Online Services it is suggested that when you get to the question ‘How would you like us to help you?’ that any request for a particular GP or nurse is entered here. Once your request goes into our inhouse specialist team (the triage team) they will take this into account as they are determining the best way to treat the specific problem you have raised with us. Whilst this may result in you seeing the person you asked to see this cannot be guaranteed for a number of reasons. These include illness, holidays or that your problem can be better treated by another member of our skilled staff.