august BAnk Holiday Opening Hours

Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th August – closed as normal

Monday 26th august – closed for bank holiday monday

tuesday 27th august – open 8:30am – 1pm and 5pm – 6pm (closed for training 1pm – 5pm)

wednesday 28th august – open as normal

Welcome to the minehead medical centre website

 The original house was built in 1898, and was run as a hotel for many years. In 1990, the building was converted to provide spacious Surgery premises. The Surgery is accessible for wheelchairs and has parking for patients.

Through our website we hope to improve our services to all our patients and enable you to find the information required at the click of a mouse. 

We are always looking to improve our services so please leave some feedback on our contact page. 

CLOSURES for staff training and local meetings

30/07/24 – Closed between 1pm and 5pm

27/08/24 – Closed between 1pm and 5pm

24/09/24 – Closed between 1pm and 4pm

29/10/24 – Closed between 1pm and 4pm

26/11/24 – Closed between 1pm and 4pm

Brave ai

This practice is using the “Brave AI” which helps staff to identify vulnerable patients who may otherwise go under the radar. Following a successful pilot in care homes in Somerset which reduced resident falls by 35%, attendances to Emergency Departments by 60%, and ambulance callouts by 8.7% the Brave AI device will be rolled out to over 30 areas in the South West in 2024. By using a machine learning (AI) algorithm to look for patterns in registered patients’ records, the technology assesses an individual’s risk of unplanned hospital admission in the next year. Integrated neighbourhood teams of nurses, pharmacists, therapists, health coaches, social prescribers and doctors then use the information to reach out to those in need. They can then offer to put in place personalised support and create a personalised care and support plan. This may include other ways of working setting up remote health monitors, offering apps to self-report wellbeing, or linking up with voluntary groups or classes to avoid loneliness. To find out more about how the tool works and what this means for you please visit the NHS Somerset website. If you would like to speak to someone in person please speak to Steve who will be able to talk you through the device. 

OUR Same-day / gp appointments system

when you call or request an appointment our reception team may ask you some questions regarding your illness to make sure you are directed to the most appropriate clinician from our multi-skilled team.

There ARE appointments available each day for minor illness with our Primary Care Practitioners (nurse practitioner or paramedic). Our GPs are seeing patients face to face for long term/chronic conditions or those that are more complex. 

please let us know if you are unable to attend your appointment

if you are not able to attend your appointment, please let us know as soon as possible so that we may be able to offer your appointment to another patient.

We have configuring our clinical system to allow text reminders for as many appointments as possible. A reminder will be sent 24 hours prior to your appointment. This text will include a link to cancel if you are unable to attend. 

appointments can also be cancelled by calling reception, via the nhs app/patient access or by emailing the surgery – somicb.mineheadmedicalcentre@nhs.net

(please note you will need to phone our surgery reception to rebook your appointment if needed)

Statistics from nhs england

More than 15 million general practice appointments are being wasted each year because patients do not turn up and fail to warn surgeries that they will not be attending.

There are around 307 million appointments scheduled with practice staff every year and 5% – one in twenty – are missed without enough notice to invite other patients. That works out as around 15.4 million missed slots.

Each appointment costs an average of £30, putting the total cost to the NHS at more than £216million pounds.

on top of the disruption for staff, and frustration for fellow patients, that would pay for:

The annual salary of 2,325 full time GPs

224, 640 cataract operations

58,320 hip replacement operations

216,000 drug treatment courses for Alzheimer’s

The annual salary of 8,424 full time community nurses

PLEASE HELP US TO HELP YOU

 If you are feeling unwell please telephone the surgery as you normally would on 01643 703441. The Receptionist will ask you some simple questions to make sure you have contact from the most appropriate clinician. THE clinician will THEN call you to assess your symptoms. if necessary they may ask you to attend the surgery TO SEE an appropriate healthcare professional or arrange further care/REFERRAL for you.

We know our phones are very busy and contacting the surgery is very difficult at times. since the start of the pandemic we have seen a significant increase in the number of calls to the surgery. 

 We would like to assure you our team will do their very best to help you and we are grateful for all the compliments we continue to receive about how helpful our team have been. 

Unfortunately due to the frustration of trying to contact us, a small number of patients have expressed their frustrations to our team in ways that are not polite and in some cases used language that is not appropriate, this has been both in person and via social media. While we would always ask patients to inform us of their concerns so that we can do our best to help improve our services, we please ask that you contact our practice management team who are there to help with these matters.

In line with the national NHS zero tolerance policy, we will not tolerate abuse to members of our team and if our team feel they are being spoken to inappropriately they will ask the caller not to speak to them in that manner and if abuse continues they will consider terminating the call, something they do not want to ever have to do. If there is a repeat of this behaviour the practice will take further action. 

There are alternative ways to contact us WHICH CAN BE FOUND in the PRESCRIPTIONS AND online services section of our website.

from somerset lmc – gp appointments

You may be finding it harder to get an appointment with your chosen doctor as quickly as either you, or we, would like.

We’d like to explain why.

Family Doctors have more work to do
Last year there were 17.4 million visits to A&E in England but 367 million GP consultations in England, up from 340 million 5 years ago. The number of GPs has remained the same.

The number of patients GP practices are caring for for is increasing and as the population is aging people have more complex health problems. Meanwhile, your GP is being asked to do more and more work for hospitals because they are also under pressure and have long waiting lists. But successive governments have given doctors more paperwork so we have actually have less time to spend with patients. Online appointments are now a “must do” which means fewer face to face appointments.

General Practices do 90% of the consultations in the NHS on less than 8% of the budget

10 years ago it was 10% of the budget. Unfortunately many young doctors don’t want to become GPs and existing GPs are leaving the profession early. GPs are also needed for jobs away from the surgery. So we may not be able to provide as many appointments as people want.

This means
You may have to wait longer to see your GP, or that another healthcare within the team may see you. We will do our best to ensure you get all the services you need, though we cannot promise they will necessarily be exactly what you want.

Please help us to help you
We understand that you may be worried or frustrated by delays but please be patient and kind to our staff team, it isn’t their fault. Don’t believe the bad press, please share these facts with others and speak to your MP and your patient participation group. With your help we will aim to get on with what we have been trained to do: help you and your family get well, keep well and stay well.