Launched in May 2016 to run for 6 months.

The Docks Collaborative are the GP Practices of Beacon Medical, Clee Medical, Healing Medical, Dr A.Kumar, Dr R.Kumar, Dr R Mathews, Raj Medical, Roxton Practice, Dr Sinha and Scartho Medical and supported by Core Care Links the Out of Hours providers.

The practices came together to look at how they could improve patient access to primary care and the pilot has been supported by NHS England.

The purpose of the pilot is to make it easier for patients to get access to urgent medical care from their local GP outside of normal surgery hours, by providing GP telephone triage during the hours of Monday to Friday 5pm to 8pm and Saturday and Sunday 8am to Noon. 

The service can be accessed via an automated system, which patients can access by ringing their normal surgery number.  Each surgery is posting information about the service on its web site, on surgery notice boards and in other forms of practice communication.  Patients are able to enquire at their own practice should they require further information.

There is no change being made to the Out of Hours service or their contact details, this pilot just provides an alternative service for patients to access.

We hope by running this pilot in the way described above, we will be able to manage the increasing demand for GP appointments resulting in reduced waiting times, reduce pressure on A&E and enable surgeries to offer an improved patient experiences.