Heaton Road Surgery

Appointments

Important notice.  Please note, due to Covid-19, the system to book appointments via the NHS app or Patient Access is not available.  If you need to book an appointment please contact the surgery on
0191 2655911.
You may prefer to complete an e-Consult which is available via our online services page.

We run all of our surgeries by an appointment-only system.

We try to ensure you consult with the doctor of your choice but if they are not available we may ask you to consult with another doctor.

Urgent Problems

If you need to consult with a doctor urgently please ring and speak to a receptionist. If we have no appointments available, you will be placed on our Triage List and our Duty Doctor or Nurse will call you back. Please note that we have limited daily triage availability and you may be advised to contact 111 if our triage list has reached safe capacity.

If an appointment is needed after assessing your symptoms over the telephone, arrangements will be made to see you at an appropriate time, at the surgery. Some urgent problems can be dealt with over the phone so if you are not sure whether you need to see a GP, please ask for a triage call from the Duty Doctor who will then assess appropriately.

Routine Appointments

Pre bookable telephone appointments are released seven days in advance. Please contact the surgery on 0191 2655911 to request a pre bookable appointment.

Cancelling your Appointment

If, for any reason, you are unable to keep your appointment, please telephone to cancel in good time so the appointment can be offered to another patient.  Appointments can also be cancelled online.

Home Visits

Requests for home visits may be made by calling the surgery, preferably before 10:00am if at all possible.  We ask that patients only request a home visit if they are genuinely housebound and too unwell to come to the surgery.

When you ring, our reception staff will ask you for your address, telephone number and a brief summary of why a visit is required.  A doctor will ring you back as soon as possible to assess the urgency of your request.

Home Visiting Guidelines

GP Visit recommended:  Home visiting makes clinical sense and is the best way of giving medical opinion involving the terminally ill or a truly housebound patient for whom travel to practice premises by car would cause deterioration in their medical condition.

GP visit may be useful:  Following a conversation with a health professional, it may be agreed that a seriously ill patient may be helped by a GPs visit.

GP visit is not usual: In most of these cases a visit would not be an appropriate use of your GPs time or best for you:

  • Heart attack,  severe crushing pain:  The best approach is to call an emergency paramedic ambulance
  • Common symptoms of childhood: fever, cold, cough, earache, headache, diarrhoea, vomiting and most cases of abdominal pain. These patients are usually well enough to travel to the surgery.  It is not harmful to take a child with fever outside
  • Adults with common problems such as cough, sore throat, influenza are also readily transportable to the doctors surgery.  Transport arrangements are the responsibility of the patient or their carers.