The current picture

About general practice services in Sefton

Your practice has a dedicated team of healthcare professionals to support you - from doctors and practice nurses to reception staff, pharmacists and social prescribers, who can provide you with lifestyle and wellbeing support.

These services are mainly offered through appointments at the GP practice you are registered with during normal opening hours.

There are a number of other ways that general practice services are provided in Sefton:

Pre-bookable evening and weekend appointments for non-urgent conditions - provided within Litherland Town Hall Medical Centre for south Sefton residents and The Family Surgery for Southport and Formby residents
Home visits for those who need one - provided by your practice or by our acute visiting service

You may also be offered a GP appointment if you contact NHS 111 when your practice is closed and your practice may also refer you to another primary care service, like our Care at the Chemist scheme that operates in a number of pharmacies in Sefton.

How your practice is working now

Throughout the pandemic GP practices in Sefton have been open and have continued to provide advice, support and treatment to their patients. Face to face appointments have also continued throughout this period for anyone who has needed to be seen in person.

As well as continuing to deliver their regular services, Sefton’s practices have also been working together in groups, called primary care networks to deliver the first phase of the COVID-19 vaccination programme.

To make sure services could continue NHS England and Improvement required your practice to put in place a range of measures to protect patients and staff at the start of the pandemic. We call these measures ‘triage’.

What is triage?

As well as keeping you and staff safe ‘triage’ helps your practice to better manage its patients and balance its workload. Triage measures could include:

Asking you to make contact by telephone or online first, using a system called e-consult rather than walking into your practice without an appointment
Asking you some extra questions when you contact your surgery to understand what help you need and who is best placed in the practice or elsewhere to provide it
Offering you a video or telephone appointment with a member of the practice team whenever it is medically appropriate

Different GP practices operate their triage systems differently. For example, some practices will use video consultations, whilst others will offer telephone appointments.

Why is triage still happening?

As the pandemic continues triage remains important because:

It helps your practice signpost you to the right medical or health and care professional
It helps reduce the number of people visiting practices, reducing the risk of spreading infection and saving patients unnecessary trips to their GP practice
It helps practices to better manage the increasing number of patients who need their advice, support and treatment