Fraud Alert: Beware of Cold Callers

We have been informed of an increase in fraudulent cold callers claiming to represent GP practices or health providers. At this time of year, we urge all patients to remain vigilant and take extra care when sharing personal information.

Key advice:

• Always verify who you are speaking to.
• End the call immediately if you have any concerns.
• Report suspicious activity to the National Fraud & Cyber Crime Reporting Centre, Action Fraud.

Stay safe and protect your information. For more advice, visit www.actionfraud.police.uk.

Today’s system outage affecting GP Practice for most of the day Monday 2/12/24.

SEVERE NETWORK OUTAGE AFFECTING APPOINTMENTS MONDAY 2/12/24.

Today Saturday 30 November we have experienced a severe network outage at the Aldershot Centre for Health. This has also affected The Wellington Practice and we believe many of the other health services held at the centre. Despite persistent attempts to resolve with our various IT partners, this has not happened and we will not have IT systems in place when we open on Monday 2/12. We have enacted our contingency plan which will mean some patients will be seen by our GPs at the Princes Gardens Practice down the hill opposite the Princes Hall Theatre where their systems are still running. So far our telephone lines are still operative. This will mean operating on reduced appointments to ensure clinical safety and we ask that you bear with us. Some nurse and blood test appointments will have to be cancelled and re-booked with our sincere apologies. This is all outside of our control. By identifying this early enough means that at least we can initiate a contingency plan before we open on Monday. None of this is ideal, it is short notice and will cause a degree of inconvenience for pre-booked appointments. We will do our best to try to get this sorted before the end of the day on Monday but contractors are not in our control. Our huge apologies if this affects you. Please be kind to our staff.

Update- Systems back up and working Monday 08:07am

Today’s system outage affecting GP Practice for most of the day.

We are really sorry that today the Aldershot Centre for Health which also mean the GP Practices had no systems to work with. This was totally beyond our control and started last night before we arrived this morning. We don’t yet know the cause of the issue and it has taken all day for our networking colleagues to fix the problem. This had meant we had to cancel all appointments today as we could not operate in a safe manner to allow the checking of patient information for safe consultations and care. We are very sorry that this happened and will seek assurances from our IT Infrastructure services to ensure that the risk of it happening again is as low as it can be. Please do get back in touch with us so we can plan a re-booking of your appointment if you were not able to be seen through the NHS 111 process. Our sincere apologies for the inconvenience as we could not send any messages from any social media to inform you of the disruption as soon as we knew about the problem.

18 to 24 November is World AMR Awareness Week

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites change over time and no longer respond to medicines, making infections harder to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness and death. As a result of drug resistance, antibiotics and other antimicrobial medicines become ineffective and infections become increasingly difficult or impossible to treat.

A global action plan to tackle the growing problem of resistance to antibiotics and other antimicrobial medicines was endorsed at the Sixty-eighth World Health Assembly in May 2015. One of the key objectives of the plan is to improve awareness and understanding of AMR through effective communication, education and training.

World AMR Awareness Week (WAAW) is a global campaign that is celebrated annually to improve awareness and understanding of AMR and encourage best practices among the public, One Health stakeholders and policymakers, who all play a critical role in reducing the further emergence and spread of AMR.

Change to urgent care – Frimley south

Change to urgent care – Frimley south | Frimley Health and Care

On Tuesday, 26 November, the pilot Aldershot Urgent Care Centre service will be coming to an end after nearly a year.

NHS Frimley, North Hampshire Urgent Care and Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust are working together to continue to provide urgent care service for the people of North East Hampshire, Surrey Heath and Farnham.

From Wednesday, 27 November, if you have a health concern and need to be seen urgently, contact your GP practice and let them know what the problem is. You can also contact NHS111 (either online via https://111.nhs.uk or by dialling 111 on your phone).

Your local pharmacy can support and advise you with a range of common health conditions. GP practices, NHS111 and pharmacy are open to people of all ages.

Children and young people, or their parents or carers, can also visit Frimley Healthier Together, an online resource with information and advice specifically designed for younger people. The information has been developed by doctors, working with parents, and uses a ‘traffic light’ system to advise you on what the best course of action is.

Your local GP practices are working hard to deliver even more appointments to support you over the coming months. Many hundreds of additional same-day appointments are being provided every week across North East Hampshire, Surrey Heath and Farnham.

If we all Make The Right Choice of health services we can support the NHS to be more effective and that will help us all to get the treatment we need more quickly. You can find out more about what services are available here: Which service do you need? | Frimley Health and Care

A number of patients have been showing anger at our reception staff because travelling to the practice has been longer than anticipated meaning they have arrived late and then can’t be seen.

Roadworks are a common sight in Aldershot and the surrounding areas for sometime and by the look of it will be so for a while yet. Please allow a lot more time to get to your appointment including time to travel and park up if coming by car as the car park is always very busy. Some buses are not stopping at their usual bus stops so allow extra time. The practice is not responsible for delays or notifying patients of where there are road works or changes in traffic light control, if you are unfortunately late for your appointment then you will be asked to re-book as we can’t accept an arrival once you are more than 5 minutes late to be fair to all our pre-booked patients.

That is the policy of the practice and most likely most other practices as we just don’t have gaps and spare time between appointments to allow for late arrivals much like any other travel timetables.

Please don’t be angry or aggressive at our reception staff when you are late and we can’t then see you, they are only doing their job upholding the practice policy. Please take extra time and allow for delays in getting to the Health Centre.