Please call us if you need an urgent appointment and use our online form for anything else.

We will ask for some brief details about what you need help with and arrange for a member of our clinical team to either phone you back to discuss it or ask you to come up to surgery for a face-to-face appointment. Patients now have the choice of seeing the clinician face to face or via the telephone or video.

If our reception team once they have listened to your concerns decide you will need to be seen face to face because the clinician will need to examine you, you will be given a face to face appointment. Many things may still be dealt with over the telephone and many patients like this for convenience.

To all patients registered with Silverdale Medical Practice.

Thank you for your patience and cooperation over the last couple of years with all the changes to our services.

This letter is to inform you of changes to our delivery of home visits.

For many years we have worked with our colleagues at the 3 other practices in Swinton: The Lakes, The Poplars and The Sides. Over the past couple of years, we have worked very closely with our Primary Care Network Team and have managed to deliver more services via this network including the First Contact Physiotherapist practitioners, the Living Well Mental Health Practitioners, delivery of the Covid vaccine and the GP plus extended access system in Swinton, which is soon to launch.

To manage demand and to come into line with the other practices in Swinton we will now only be able to offer home visits for BEDBOUND or end of life patients.

We currently receive numerous requests from patients who are able to attend the hospital or leave the house for other appointments, for example to see the District Nurses in clinic. It will now be assumed that all patients are able to attend the surgery unless an agreement has been made with the clinical team. This will include visits by our Practice Nurses for routine reviews or bloods. We realise that if people are having to rely on friends and family to bring them, that we will need to be as flexible as possible in providing a convenient appointment time.

All requests for acute on the day home visits will be triaged by our clinical team and assessed individually. If there is a genuine clinical need for a home visit, then we will of course provide the appropriate medical care.

We thank you for your co-operation in this matter and really appreciate your help in managing the increase demand on primary care services.

Kind regards

Dr Ian Ballin, Dr Zahid Ahmed, Dr Mitesh Sharma and Dr Karin McCall

GP Partners at Silverdale Medical Practice.