Register for Patchs

PATCHS is our online consultation tool. It allows you to contact us for a routine health problem via an online form rather than having to wait on the phone. It is much more sophisticated than e-mail and gives us lots of tools to help manage requests. There are numerous different online communication tools being made available to primary care and we have chosen to use PATCHS as our option as we feel at present it best suits our needs. Please bear in mind that we don’t design PATCHS or control the interface, but it does plug into our clinical systems to ensure your messages come through to us.

You can use PATCHS to:

• Request a routine appointment for a medical problem (if your issue is urgent do not use PATCHS, phone us instead)
• Request a medication (one off or repeat)
• Request a sick note

Yes you can. However rather than selecting one of the “Health Problem” options, please select the “Other” option or if this is unavailable the “Admin” option (this will be more obvious when logged in to PATCHS). Please do not use these options if you are requesting an appointment for a medical problem. Using the “Other” or “Admin” option you can request an appointment for:

• A long term condition review – for example asthma or COPD check, blood pressure review or annual diabetes monitoring
• Routine monitoring blood test
• 6-8 week post natal baby check
• Cervical smear
• Family planning services such as mirena coils, implants or pill checks
• Routine vaccines / immunisations
• Travel vaccines

Requesting routine appointments via PATCHS means you can request an appointment without having to wait on the phone. This means we can try and keep the phone lines free for urgent issues which may need an on the day appointment.

Your form will be looked at by our care navigation team and with support from the doctors in the practice, you will be offered the most appropriate appointment option based on the information provided. This may be a face to face appointment, telephone call, online message reply with advice or signposting to a more appropriate service. Please note depending on the volume of forms we receive it may take up to 3 working days to process you form. If an appointment is needed we look to book this in within 6 weeks, but often it is well within this timeframe. We will communicate back to you regarding the appointment options, or if we need more information, via the PATCHS system (you will be notified via a text message and/or e-mail about any reply). Although going via this route means we may not be able to instantly provide you with an appointment date, you can be reassured that your request is logged and we will contact you with the options available. 

We want to talk to patients who are requesting an urgent appointment to gather as much information as possible and ensure we prioritise the most urgent cases. There are benefits to directly speaking to patients with urgent issues rather than going via an online system. In addition we receive a large number of PATCHS forms every day and it isn’t always possible to look at every form submitted that day. We wouldn’t want an urgent case to be missed therefore ask for any urgent appointment requests to be phoned through to the surgery.

There are times when due to clinical capacity we have to turn the forms off. This is to ensure we can safely manage demand as uncapped we would be receiving in the region of 200-300 forms / day (in addition to urgent phone calls) and we would be unable process this number in a responsive timeframe. There is a cap on the number of forms we can accept every day and if this is exceeded the forms will turn off. The forms will generally then be available again at the start of the next working day. We are looking to increase our online form capacity moving forward.

Please note the “Medication request” forms will always be available alongside the “Admin” request option. We are happy for you to use the “Admin” option to request a routine nurse appointment (as listed above in this document) but do not use this option for a routine medical problem.

If this is the case please phone us or visit the reception desk and one of our team can help you fill out a form or do it on your behalf. You can also allow someone (for example a carer) to register on PATCHS for you and submit a form on your behalf.

Visit our PATCHS page at https://patchs.ai/practice/thehumbleyardpractice

You can use a browser on any device to access PATCHS (phone, tablet, laptop or desktop)

From here you can create an account, or login if you already have one

The team from PATCHS have their own help document which provides more details on the service, you can find this at Patients – PATCHS Support

Although we could create our own help document, as PATCHS is frequently being updated with new functionality we feel it best to link to the support guides provided by the PATCHS team.

We do hear this feedback from time to time. The forms are structured in a way which help GP surgeries get as much relevant information as possible, in a format which is easy for us to process. This ensures we can make a decision on the most appropriate appointment option. Although the person submitting the form may prefer just to add information like they would in an e-mail, it really does help us using the PATCHS structured format. Please note we don’t have any direct control on how the forms appear.