West Heath Surgery offers a number of different types of appointments including face to face, telephone or video consultations. It can be useful to have a telephone or video consultation when you do not need to be physically examined by a doctor.

The surgery operates a booking system for all its appointments unless otherwise stated for specific clinics. This is done in order to allow you an appropriate consultation slot for your medical needs with the relevant clinician. An appointment system also allows you to attend the practice at an exact time thus reducing the period you may need to wait within the practice to be seen.

To learn more about our telephone consultations please click here.

How to book an appointment

To book an appointment, please contact us on 0121 476 1135. Urgent appointments are released on the day in order to deal with urgent queries, with routine appointments also available for routine and non-urgent reviews. Appointments are also available on the NHS app and are released 2 weeks in advance for routine purposes.

When booking appointments please remember the following points:

  • If you know you need to book an appointment please book as soon as possible in order to obtain your preferred time and date. All the practice clinicians can be booked up to 6-8 weeks in advance in order to accommodate this.
  • The receptionist will ask you for a reason for the appointment. This is done in order to book you the appropriate length of consultation with the appropriate clinician. The practice staff will not be offended if you prefer not to provide a reason however if an inappropriate consultation is booked, the doctor or nurse may ask you to re-book. All of the practice receptionists are bound by the rules of confidentiality.
  • Please note that the doctors and nurses generally allow 10 minute consultations for each condition that you wish to discuss. If you want to get advice on more than one condition please advise the receptionist at the time of booking in order to book you an appointment with the appropriate length of time.
  • An appointment is very valuable and therefore someone else could benefit from it if you cannot attend. Therefore please contact the surgery, ideally no later than 24 hours before the appointment time, to cancel it if is no longer required or needs to be rearranged. Patients that repeatedly book appointments and fail to attend or re-arrange with appropriate notice will be removed from the practice.
  • You may request which clinician you would like to see, particularly in order to achieve continuity of care however please note that it may not always be in your best interest to see a particular clinician as each clinician has different skills and interests. It may not always be possible to see a particular clinician due to annual leave etc. Please note for all urgent appointment requests you will be allocated an appointment with the on-call doctor, which might not be your usual doctor.

How to cancel or rearrange and appointment

To cancel or rearrange an appointment please contact the practice on 0121 476 1135 as soon as you know you will be unable to attend the pre-booked time allotted to you. Practice staff will gratefully appreciate any attempts to cancel unwanted appointments so that other patients can benefit from your cancellation.

For all other appointments booked in person or over the phone, these can be cancelled using our free text service. All you need to do is reply with the word ‘CANCEL’ to appointment reminder text message which you will usually receive approximately 24 hours before your appointment.

Patients who repeatedly fail to attend appointments without cancelling with the reception team will be removed from the surgery list in order to maintain a high standard of service to other patients.

What if I need a Chaperone?

Some medical consultations, examinations and investigations can be potentially distressing and leave patients feeling vulnerable, particularly for ‘intimate examinations’ or examinations being completed by a member of the opposite sex.

West Heath Surgery feels it is important for both its patients and team members to feel comfortable during clinical consultations. For most patients and procedures, respect, explanation, consent and privacy are all that is needed however should the circumstances occur when this is not the case, a Chaperone may be requested. Please note, a clinician may also request a Chaperone, should they feel it is appropriate.

All administrative team members of the Surgery are Chaperone trained- should you wish for a Chaperone to accompany you in your Face-to-Face consultation, please let the administrative team know at the time of booking or the time of attendance.