On a typical Monday morning, Julie Schultzers and her team of GP receptionists will receive 500 phone calls. Getting through all the calls during this “8am rush” used to be impossible — forcing some patients to hang up or go to accident and emergency instead.
Now the staff at Wide Way Medical Centre in south London have come up with an innovative solution that guarantees every single phone call is answered — by getting ambulance call handlers to step in.
Under a pilot scheme, 80 per cent of patients calling the GP practice for a same-day appointment are diverted to a separate hub of 20 call handlers employed by the London Ambulance Service, who are based 15 miles away in Barking, east London.
David Chung has been registered at the surgery since 1978 and remembers when you would simply turn up for an appointment
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER RICHARD POHLE
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