We are pleased to announce an important change to our appointment system that we believe will benefit our patients.  These adjustments are designed to ensure greater continuity of care and to make the process of booking an appointment fair, based on need, making this easier for everyone.

Routine GP appointments will now be bookable 28 days, 14 days, and 2 days in advance.  They will not be available to book online. To book, patients will need to use patient triage (scan the QR code or visit our appointment page), by telephone or in person at front desk.  This is to enable our team to care navigate you to the most suitable service/clinician, not always the GP. 

We believe this change will significantly improve your experience with us.  Our goal is to provide you with the highest quality of care and service, and we are confident that these improvements will help us achieve that.

If you have any questions or need assistance in booking an appointment, please do not hesitate to reach out to one of our Reception Administrators who would be happy to assist you.

NHS England have refused to negotiate with General Practice regarding the cost of providing blood tests - this practice makes a loss on every blood test undertaken. All Northamptonshire practices are therefore we will only be doing blood tests requested by our own GPs - if the hospital requests that you need a blood test, unfortunately you will need to have this done at the hospital it will be refused at the practice. 

This is not a decision the partners at the practice have taken lightly but something has to give - practices are handing back their contracts to NHS England as they are unable to financially run their practices & we do not want to be one of these.

To book an appointment at Northampton General Hospital (NGH):

• Adults only - https://www.swiftqueue.co.uk/northampton.php 
• Children - https://www.swiftqueue.co.uk/northampton.php

We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you but ask that you support general practice in its fight to gain the recognition it deserves from NHS England.

We appreciate your frustrations as many of you struggle to obtain an appointment where it felt previously you were able to get one more freely. 

General Practice has had to change over the past few years due to lack of funding & forever changing targets set by NHS England & the Government. But, we have been busy, delivering 7️⃣,4️⃣9️⃣9️⃣ appointments to our patient population in April, as well as unseen work not shown here. 

General Practice existed decades before the NHS arrived, & over time, GP practices have had to adapt, modernise, use technology, & embrace the talents of the multidisciplinary team. 

You can still book appointments over front desk or over the telephone, but only when we have one available. The faults with the NHS, lack of appointments, & demand, are not the responsibility of our hard working reception staff.

Only a percentage of our appointments are now available to book online, this is to ensure we can care navigate & signpost patients to the most appropriate clinician, not always the GP. 

Appointments with GPs are bookable by reception on the day, 7 days & 14 days in advance depending on need, but when they are booked we have no choice but to direct you elsewhere & to utilise online services to help you. 

Please #BeKind to #TeamGNWMP, we are all doing our best to help 💙🌈

For some years, practices throughout Northamptonshire have been asked to organise work that should, by right, be completed either by the Hospitals or the Community Trusts (NHFT), even though no additional resources were offered to help us do this.

Unfortunately, mounting primary care challenges mean this activity can no longer be sustained. Our practices are working harder than ever, and some are reaching breaking points. 90% of patient contacts occur in primary care, even though we get just 8% of the NHS budget.

Northamptonshire’s population is experiencing increasingly complex challenges that must be supported, so we can no longer commit to conducting unfunded activity that should be completed elsewhere. After much consideration, practices right across the county have advised the leadership that they can no longer undertake this unfunded activity.

From 1st May 2024, we are asking the Hospitals and NHFT to complete all their own work. We will return correspondence to them where necessary. If needed, we aim to direct you to the best hospital point of contact to help resolve your issue. Meanwhile, if you have any concerns or comments about these changes, then please email them to the address below: northantsicb.primarycareteam@nhs.net

• Around 30.5 million standard (non-COVID-19 vaccination) appointments were booked in February 2024, with an average of 1.45m appointments being delivered per working day. This is lower than the average of 1.48m appointments per working day the previous month.
• An average of 1.40m appointments per day were booked in the past year (March 2023– February 2024).
• The number of COVID-19 vaccination appointments decreased significantly from about 11,700 in January 2024 to approximately 140 in February 2024.
• In terms of access, the proportion of appointments booked to take place the same day has decreased slightly from the previous month: 43.5% of appointments in February 2024 were booked to take place on the same day, compared to almost 45% in January 2024.

Appointments booked to take place face to face stayed the same – about 67% of appointments in both January 2024 and February 2024. 45.2% of appointments were delivered by a GP in February 2024: a slight decrease since the previous month (45.5%).

• There are 32 fewer fully qualified, full-time equivalent GPs in February 2024 than January 2024, the first month showing a fall in FTE numbers after seven months of sustained increases. We have the equivalent of 1,862 fewer fully qualified full-time GPs than we did in September 2015.
• The number of GP practices in England has decreased by 105 over the past year – reflecting a long-term trend of closures as well as mergers. This fall in both staff numbers and GP practice coincides with a rise in patients: as of February 2024, there was another record-high of 63.20 million patients registered with practices in England – an average of 10,018 patients registered per practice.
• As a result, each full-time equivalent GP is now responsible for an average of 2,298 patients. This is an increase of 360 patients per GP, or nearly 19%, since 2015, demonstrating the ever-mounting workload in general practice

Download the latest NHS App update.

The new Pharmacy First scheme has launched, meaning you can now get treatment for 7 common ailments directly from your pharmacist instead of needing your GP. 

The 7 conditions are:

• impetigo
• ear ache
• sinusitis
• sore throats
• insect bites
• shingles
• uncomplicated urine infection

Welcome to our new website. 

Through our website, we hope to improve our services for our patients and enable you to find information you require.  If you would like us to feature anything on our website please let us know via email to gnwmpadmin@nhs.net.