Frequently Asked Questions

Because it can be difficult to call patients at a time that is suitable for you and us, we find that it's better to contact you via text message. You can then read any message at your leisure, and we can communicate with hundreds of patients more efficiently.

Our messages are designed to be viewed on either a smartphone or a non-internet mobile phone.

• If you have a smartphone, the text message will be short and there will be a link so that you can view the full message online. This is safe and secure and these messages will come from an NHS-NoReply sender.
• If you have a non-internet mobile phone, the message will be sent to you as several text messages. Depending on your phone, they may appear as one long message or as several short messages. They will come from a sender with the phone number +447903 593495.

Please add +447903 593495 to your contacts as 'Dr Jefferies and Partners Texts'.

Our system cannot tell if you do not have a smartphone. Therefore, if you are receiving short messages that have a link in them or seem to be cut short, please contact the practice and we will update your account so that you receive full text messages in future.

Our system cannot tell if you do not have a smartphone. Therefore, if you are receiving short messages that have a link in them or seem to be cut short, please contact the practice and we will update your account so that you receive full text messages in future.

Because it can be difficult to call patients at a time that is suitable for you and us, we find that it's better to contact you via text message. You can then read any message at your leisure, and we can communicate with hundreds of patients more efficiently.

If you do not have a mobile phone, our system will show this and we won't attempt to send you any reminders or messages.

If you will be off work for more than seven days, a Sick note can be requested using the form via the link below. Please select Sick Note and complete all relevant fields.

If you are feeling a bit better and would like to return to work but are not sure if you are ready, a Fit note can be requested using the same form. A fit note can help you get back to work by requesting additional support from your employer such as a phased return or amended hours.

A clinician will review your request and issue your note if appropriate within 10 working days. Go to form

Thank you for your consideration and for choosing to let us know that you need to cancel your booked appointment.

You should have received a confirmation text message five days before your appointment is due.

• If your confirmation text message is from NHS-NoReply, please follow the link and select Cancel and Send.
• If your confirmation message is from +447903 593495, please reply to the text with the word 'NO'.

Your appointment can then be given to another patient.

Example text message from NHS NoReply

Example text message from +447903 593495

Thank you for your consideration and for choosing to let us know that you need to cancel your booked appointment.

If you do not have a mobile phone, please call the practice on 020 7385 1965 and let us know with as much notice as possible.

We are concentrating on providing better communication with our patients so that you can have more control over your health and we can provide better coverage to the community.

If you have made a future appointment with us, we will send you two messages before the appointment. The confirmation message will come five days before your appointment date. It includes details about the date, time and type of appointment that was made.

You will need to respond to the first confirmation message within 24 hours otherwise your appointment will be cancelled.

• If your confirmation message is from NHS-NoReply, please follow the link and select Confirm and Send.
• If your confirmation message is from +447903 593495, please reply to the text with the word 'YES'.

The message is usually a welcome reminder that gives you plenty of time to decide if you still need the appointment. For instance, if you were feeling poorly and are now feeling much better, that's great news! You can let us know that you don't need the appointment anymore so that we can book it with another patient

If you still need the appointment, respond to the message and then remember to book time off work, check your travel arrangements or anything else that will help you to get here safely on the day of your appointment.

If you don't have enough credit to respond by text, you can call us on 020 7385 1965 and leave a voicemail to confirm instead. Just press one, you don't need to wait in the queue.

We are concentrating on providing better communication with our patients so that you can have more control over your health and we can provide better coverage to the community.

If you have made a future appointment with us, we will send you two messages before the appointment.

You will have already responded to the first appointment confirmation message several days ago and a second reminder message will prompt you the day before to check that you still require the appointment. A lot can happen in-between booking and attending an appointment and we appreciate that circumstances can change.

If you don't have enough credit to respond by text, you can call us on 020 7385 1965 and leave a voicemail to confirm instead. Just press one, you don't need to wait in the queue.

In October we had 480 patient missing appointments. By improving our communication with you, we have reduced the number of Did Not Attend appointments by over 50% to less than 200, which means that we can provide more appointments overall.

In order to improve further and to provide even better coverage to our community, we request that you confirm that you still require your appointment, after you have booked it.

A text message will come five days before your appointment. You have 24 hours to respond to this message to let us know that you still want to attend.

For patients who do not respond to this message, we will conclude that you do not need the appointment anymore and we will cancel it. This gives us time to rebook the same time slot with another patient.

If your appointment was cancelled but you replied to the confirmation message to say that you did want to keep it, please accept our apologies and let us know so that we can check the system is working properly.

If you do not have an internet connected mobile phone (smartphone), and you received a text message where the full message was cut off, please let us know so that we can update our system to show that you need to receive full text messages in the future.

If you can't attend your appointment and don't let us know first, we will be waiting for you rather than treating you or other patients. The appointment will then be recorded as a 'Did Not Attend'.

The number of 'Did Not Attend' appointments is an important measure of how well we are all contributing to the health of our community. If we have a high number of patients who do not attend their appointments, we have fewer appointments available overall. This negatively impacts everyone in the practice and our neighbourhood, but there is an easy solution.

Better communication to and from our patients has enabled us to reduce the number of Did Not Attend appointments by over 50%, which is amazing.

Please, let us know in advance if you can't attend your appointment so that we can offer your timeslot to another patient.

You can cancel your appointment easily by responding to the messages or you can call us on 020 7385 1965 and leave a voicemail. Just press one, you don't need to wait in the queue.

If you miss your appointment and don’t let us know beforehand, we have to log that appointment as a ‘Did Not Attend’.

The number of 'Did Not Attend' appointments is an important measure of how well we are all contributing to the health of our community. If we have a high number of patients who do not attend their appointments, we have fewer appointments available overall.

We appreciate that random things can happen on the day or even on the journey to your appointment and we want to understand more about the reasons that patients might have missed their appointment without cancelling it.

Therefore we would really appreciate your feedback on the survey included with the missed appointment message. We want to understand how we can improve our service to you do that you don't miss your next appointment.

If you already have an appointment booked and would like to check the details, you have multiple options:

• If you have requested SystmOnline login details, you can login to SystmOnline to view your Appointments.
• If you don't have access to your SystmOnline account yet, you can request access to SystmOnline here.
• If you have installed the NHS app on your mobile device, log into the app using your NHS login details to view your Appointments.
• If you haven't installed the NHS app, you can set up an NHS login and download the app using this guidance from the NHS website.
• If you don't want to install the app, you can still set up an NHS login and access your account via the NHS website directly.

Please note: the NHS app is different from the NHS Covid-19 app, which was developed to help with contact tracing. The NHS app enables you to show your Covid-19 vaccine status as well as order repeat prescriptions, book and view appointments and get health advice.

If you have an ongoing medical condition that requires long-term, daily use of the same medication, then a repeat prescription is used. The repeat prescription has a maximum number of issues (to be collected from the pharmacy). This is like having multiple prescriptions for the same medication to be collected gradually over a long time period. The entire repeat prescription is authorised by the doctor, which means that all future refills from it are authorised for your use.

A repeat prescription could be used for something like diabetes. Although the medication will need to be taken every day, it cannot be dispensed from the chemist in one large batch to cover, say, a year's worth of doses. It also wouldn't be practical to require the patient to come in every month to get a new prescription once they start to run out. A repeat prescription lets the doctor authorise the medication for long-term use, without having to physically give you all the medication in one go.

Repeat prescriptions are used for chronic conditions like diabetes, epilepsy or depression. They can also be used for medication that isn't taken daily; or even monthly, but is still required regularly enough that its use is not considered a one-off need. This can include medication for seasonal allergies, such as hay fever. It's OK if you only require the medication once every few months or even less. The repeat prescription will be saved and ready for you to request a new supply when you feel the need.

There are multiple benefits to having a repeat prescription for medication that you regularly use:

1. Once the repeat prescription is authorised by the doctor, it covers you for a maximum number of refill prescriptions without having to see the doctor again.
2. Requesting a refill before you have run out of your current medication can be done online, via the NHS website/app or in the practice. Because it is already authorised by the doctor, we can quickly send it through to the chemist when you request it.
3. When medication is prescribed as multiple one-off acute prescriptions over a long time, it can become difficult to keep track of your ongoing usage requirements and conditions.
4. Repeat prescriptions are authorised for a maximum number of issues/refills and once you have requested the last one, we will prompt you for a medication review to see how you are getting on.
5. When the maximum number of issues/refills on a repeat prescription has been collected, it can be reviewed and renewed by a doctor, pharmacist or prescribing nurse.

There are three main types of prescriptions used for medication:

• Acute prescriptions - these are for short-term use medication, usually for an injury or disease, for example; pain relief from a broken bone, antibiotics for a chest infection or ointment for a minor burn. An appointment is required for an acute prescription, which will only provide enough medication to cover a month or less.
• Repeat dispensed - this is a type of repeat prescription where all issues/refills are sent to the pharmacy at the start. The pharmacy still dispenses them to you on a fixed regular time period, but you don't need to contact the practice or request your refills online because the pharmacy already has them. You can go directly to the pharmacy when you are ready to get a new supply, as long as there are issues left on the repeat prescription.

If your medication is on a standard repeat prescription and you still have issues/refills left on it, you can request a new supply via the NHS app, the NHS website, your SystmOnline account or via the practice. The pharmacy will usually be notified that you need a new supply on the same day.

If your medication is on a repeat dispensed prescription and you still have issues/refills left on it, you can go straight to the pharmacy to collect your next supply.

When you have collected the last issue/refill from your repeat prescription, we will review your medical records to ensure that the medication is working well for you. If everything looks good, we will renew the repeat prescription for another set of future issues/refills. If we need you to come in for any tests first, we will invite you to make an appointment with plenty of notice. This helps to ensure an uninterrupted supply for you.

If you aren't able to come in for an appointment before your last refill runs out, we won't be able to renew your repeat prescription for the maximum number of refills and will have to do a temporary refill.

If your medication is not on a repeat prescription, you'll need to have an appointment with a clinician to get a new prescription authorised.

Depending on your medication, various annual health checks may be required to ensure that your condition and any possible side effects are being properly managed. For instance, regular blood pressure checks are required for ongoing hypertension.

Some health conditions do not have any NHS-recommended annual checks or blood test requirements, but we don't want to just renew medication repeatedly without checking in to see how you are doing. Therefore, we have implemented an annual questionnaire for those health conditions, which allows you to let us know how the medication is working for you and if you have any concerns.

The questionnaire is available online and takes just a few minutes to complete. If you have any problems accessing the questions, please contact the practice and someone can go through them with you over the phone.

Medication reviews are not generally carried out by the doctors. Depending on your medication and health condition, various checks may be required to ensure that your condition and any possible side effects are being properly managed. These can include blood tests, blood pressure checks, or appointments for health reviews.

If it has been a while since you have had any of these tests, we will send you an invite to come in and see a nurse or healthcare associate, so that the tests can be carried out. Or we might send you an online questionnaire to fill out. If any of the results indicate a potential concern, an appointment will then be required with a pharmacist or doctor. If there are no concerns, or you have had normal results within the last 12 months, you won't need to have a medication review with the doctor.

If you are having any problems with your repeat prescription then you can make an appointment with a pharmacist at any time. If the medication is no longer treating your condition or if you are experiencing unacceptable side effects, you don't have to wait until your annual review to let us know.

The pharmacist may adjust your dosage, suggest an alternative medication for you to try, or request you to come in for some tests, in case there is an underlying reason for the medication not helping you anymore.

If you have received a link asking you to complete a questionnaire regarding your asthma, it is important for you to complete it as this will allow us to check how controlled your asthma is and ensure that you are on the best treatment plan for you.

The complete set of questions is shown below with some extra guidance on how to answer:

1. During the past four weeks, how often did your asthma prevent you from getting as much done at work, school or home? i.e. your asthma was noticeable, on your mind or made you worried
• All of the time i.e. every day over the last month
• Most of the time i.e. less than 20 days in total
• Some of the time i.e. less than 10 days in total
• A little of the time i.e. less than 5 days in total
• None of the time i.e. no days over the last month
2. During the past four weeks, how often have you had shortness of breath? i.e. you had to stop what you were doing and take a break, even if only for a minute
• More than once a day
• Once a day
• Three or more times a week
• Once or twice a week
• Not at all
3. During the past four weeks, how often did your asthma symptoms wake you up at night or earlier than usual in the morning? i.e. you were wheezing, coughing, had shortness of breath, chest tightness or were in pain so much that you couldn't sleep
• Four or more nights a week i.e. every week over the past month for most of the nights
• Two or three nights a week i.e. every week over the past month for some of the nights
• Once a week i.e. every week you'll have about one night with a problem
• Once or twice i.e. not every week but maybe once or twice over the past month
• Not at all i.e. your sleep is not affected by your asthma
4. During the past four weeks, how often have you used your reliever inhaler (usually the blue one) of nebuliser medication? i.e. you needed to go and get your inhaler and use it to help you to breathe more comfortably
• Three or more times per day
• One or two times per day
• Two or three times per week
• Once a week or less
• Not at all
5. How would you rate your asthma control during the past four weeks? i.e. when you start noticing your asthma is causing you discomfort, can you get back to feeling normal and confident pretty quickly?
• Not controlled at all i.e. every asthma incident you had over the past months required emergency medical assistance
• Poorly controlled i.e. you had an incident requiring medical assistance and were not confident in your inhaler for most of the month
• Somewhat controlled i.e. you had a few occasions where you worried that your inhaler was not helping, but it did eventually
• Well controlled i.e. you did not have any incidents where you were worried that your inhaler might not be helping
• Completely controlled i.e. you did not have an incidents
6. How many exacerbations have you had in the past 12 months? i.e. how many times were your symptoms too bad for your inhaler to help and you needed urgent medical attention in the past year?

Even if you are feeling fine at the time you are answering the questions, remember to think about how you have felt over the last month (four weeks)

Once you have completed your questionnaire, a clinician will review your answers and we will be in touch with you to let you know if we need to see you or make an adjustment to you current treatment plan.

If you have any difficulties, please contact the practice and one of our staff members will be able to help you.

Following the review of cryotherapy’s efficacy in comparison to over-the-counter products available for treatment of warts and veruccas, we have made the executive decision of ceasing the service permanently.

The recent research has revealed that there has been no evidence of a difference between cryotherapy and the use of topical salicylic acid in treatments of warts and verrucas.

Additionally, cryotherapy requires several treatments, can be painful at the time of application, and may cause pain, blistering, infection, scarring, and depigmentation.

Please see the following leaflet for more information on alternatives and advice on how to help prevent the spread of warts and veruccas.

Cryotherapy Alternatives