How Do I?

Order repeat prescriptions

  • You can order your prescriptions by e-mail – kmicb.thorndike.prescriptions@nhs.net  these will be ready to collect after (5 working days), if they are routine, if your medications need to be reviewed by a doctor this may take a little longer.
  • You can order prescriptions via Patient Access, however, you must contact reception to obtain your registration papers.
  • Your repeat medication can also be requested from your usual pharmacy. Your authorised repeat prescription will be available for you to collect within 1 week.
  • You can post your request to the practice with a stamped addressed envelope.
  • If you take a medication on a long-term basis you can request a prescription by completing a repeat prescription request form at reception.

Contact the Out of Hours Service

111 The New NHS Number

The telephone number to call when you need medical attention help fast – but it’s not an emergency.

If the surgery is closed and you think you need to see a doctor or attend A & E phone 111 first.

Accident and emergency / 999

If you need emergency medical treatment, you must call 999

If you or a member of your family experience severe chest pain, loss of blood or suspected broken bones, go to your nearest accident and emergency department or call 999. Accident and emergency departments are open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and can assess injuries and provide emergency treatment.

UTC – Urgent Treatment Centre

Urgent Treatment Centre operates a walk-in service for unregistered and registered patients.

Open 24hours a day, 365 days a year.

Medway Maritime Hospital

Windmill Road
Gillingham
Kent
ME7 5NY

Tel:01634 830000

www.dmchealthcare.co.uk

Arrange a home visit

Although a traditional part of general practice, home visits are time consuming. Please remember that several patients can be seen in the practice in the time that it takes to make one home visit. So please help us to help you and our other patients by visiting the surgery whenever possible.

Home Visits are reserved for the following groups of patients:

  • Terminally ill;
  • Housebound;
  • Patients who are severely ill in bed;

Please request visits before 11am whenever possible as this allows the Duty Doctor to assess the request for necessity and urgency so that it can be appropriately managed.

In some situations the Duty Doctor may arrange assessment by another member of the community team (Home visiting team/District nurse/neighbourhood team) .

The home visiting team clinician will directly input into the patients notes and notify the surgery of any follow up requirements; if there is an urgent need they will telephone the surgery to make a GP is aware of the patients’ needs.

The following ARE NOT valid reasons to perform a home visit:

Transport issues for the patient

  • It is not the GP practice responsibility to arrange transport, or to perform home visits because the patient has difficulty arranging transport. In these circumstances patients should seek transport help from relatives, friends, or taxi firms.

Childcare issues for a patient

  • If a patient has difficulty arranging for someone to care for their children whilst attending appointments, the patients are welcome to bring their children to the surgery.

Poor mobility

  • Whilst it is understood that having poor mobility is inconvenient and unpleasant, GP surgeries are designed to cater for patients with restricted mobility. If patients are able to attend appointments at other healthcare settings, then they should also be expected to attend appointments in GP surgeries.

An unwell child

  • It is in the best interest of the child to attend the surgery where they can be properly assessed and treated. The clinician can make a more informed clinical judgment when seeing the child in surgery. If a parent believes that the child is too unwell to travel to surgery, and is a medical emergency then it would be advisable for them to seek help from the emergency services by calling 999.

Residents of care home

  • Care home residents are no different to patients in their own homes. The need to visit should be based upon clinical need, not the availability of transport or staff to attend the surgery. It is the responsibility of care facilities to make transport available for residents so that they can get to medical and non-medical appointments. Routine visit requests for care homes can be requested however will be deferred until appropriate clinical resource available Please note that the Patient Choice Scheme will allow GP practices to register new patients who live outside the practice area, without any obligation to provide home visits or out of hours services when the patient is unable to attend their registered practice.

Book an appointment

Main surgery telephone number 01634 817217 to book an appointment.

Book your appointment via eConsult, link to be found on the home page 

We offer a full range of appointments. We have some appointments that you can pre-book up to 4 weeks in advance. The pre-bookable appointments enable the surgery to deal with follow-up medical conditions or things that can wait. The on the day appointments are for urgent medical conditions that cannot wait.

We always endeavour to see/telephone patients with urgent problems who need to be seen/telephoned, on the same day by our daily duty doctor if all of our ‘on the day’ appointments have gone.  We offer pre-bookable appointments for routine and follow-up appointments.

Register with the practice

You will need to complete a Thorndike Partnership new patient registration form and an NHS family doctor services registration form which can be collected from the surgery or found on the website under the forms tab dropdown.

Once completed the forms will need to be handed into the surgery to process the registration.

We are welcoming new patient

registrations

Thorndike surgery and Primary Care nationwide is under severe pressure at this time.

 

We have been receiving an unprecedented demand over the last year, requests for appointments has increased by 100% and a 3 fold increase in calls to the surgery.

 

Our patient list size is the lowest it has been for a long while and as we are not considered to be at capacity, we have to abide by the rules of NHS England and promote that our list is open.

 

We have returned to normal duties and offering face to face appointments where clinically required. Please note although we have increased our GP numbers we currently have several on long term sick.

 

We thank you for your patience at this very difficult time.

 

Thorndike Partnership

 

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

E-CONSULT is  restricted to 3 hours per day between 9am-12pm.

 

PHONE LINES  our phones lines open from 8am -6.30pm Monday to Friday

on 01634 817217.

 

FOR QUERIES EMAIL – thorndike@nhs.net

 

FOR PRESCRIPTIONS EMAIL – kmicb.thorndike.prescriptions@nhs.net or use patient access

 

FOR BLOOD TEST APPOINTMENTS telephone the dedicated blood line on 01634 810814, the line is open from 8am to 5pm