Klinik

What is Klinik and Why is Penryn Surgery Using it?

As a surgery we receive hundreds of calls per day from patients trying to book appointments with our GPs, Nurses and allied health professionals.

  • We only have a limited number of appointments available each day, and this can make it difficult to book the appointment you need.
  • The morning rush for appointments is stressful for both patients and staff. Often it's a case of first come, first served.
  • We worry that those patients that need urgent help are being missed, or struggling to access our services.
  • Patients may not know who they need to see about their symptoms.

We have decided to implement a tool called Klinik which will help us triage appointment requests.

This will be used for all appointment requests including Nursing and Clinical Pharmacist appointments, it can also be used for sick notes, private medical reports and more.

Klinik will allow patients to submit their queries and appintment requests and aid us in triaging them, so we can see the most urgent cases quicker.

  • Rather than first come first served, it becomes most unwell, first served. 
  • Once your submission is received we will contact you to arrange a date and time for an appointment if required.
  • You will never be told to 'call again tomorrow at 8am'

No system is perfect, and no one likes change. It may take some time for both us and patients to get used to. However we think we can see the right patients quicker, direct patients to the correct service, and reduce the stress of fighting for appointments using Klinik. 

Concerns about using Klinik

We aren't trying to see fewer patients, we promise!

We get frustrated, as you do, that those patients that really need us have such a fight to see a GP.

We also get frustrated when a patient clearly needs more than 10 minutes to address their problem(s). 

Klinik will allow us to highlight those patients and see them appropriately - be that the same day for urgent problems. Or perhaps on a more routine basis, but for a longer appointment slot to discuss more complex issues. 

For those who can't use a computer, our reception team are trained to assist you in submitting a Klinik query via the telephone. 

How Will It Work?

In any circumstance when you would have rang reception previously, you can now submit your enquiry/request via Klinik.

The easy to use online form doesn't take long to complete. 

We can then review your submission and direct you to the right appointment, with the right person, in the right timescale.

We'll contact you to arrange whatever is required, or signpost you to where you need to go.

If you can't use the online form we have staff trained to help you submit your symptoms via Klinik over the phone.

An example from Day 1 of Klinik:

Day 1 of using Klinik and we thought we’d share some stats to try and illustrate why we’re trialling the new system. The following is a simplified example:
 
 - 340 patients requested an appointment today.
 
 - We typically can safely provide around 180 appointments on a Monday, but around half of these would already have been booked in advance/pre-booked, leaving around 100 slots.
 
 - With the old system the first 100 calls would have been booked ‘first come first served’ leaving 240 people told to call back another day, unable to even tell us why they called. They may have urgent symptoms of cancer for example.
 
 - With Klinik we reviewed each one of those 340 appointment requests, arranged to see the urgent ones today, booked the more routine into pre-bookable slots in the future, and re-directed those who needed to see another service appropriately.
 
We know change is never popular, but we hope you can see the difference between supply and demand, and how we have to try and tackle that problem!