Stoke Road Surgery

Latest surgery news

📢17/08/2026: A message to our patients about appointments

We understand that when you are unwell or worried, you want help as soon as possible. We feel the same – our whole team wants to support you quickly and safely when you need care.

General practice works within a limited budget. This means there is a fixed amount of funding available, and practices must carefully manage it to provide as many appointments as possible for patients. Decisions must be made about using this funding to have the right mix of staff, such as GPs, nurses, pharmacists, paramedics and social prescribers, so patients can be seen by the most appropriate person.

To keep patients safe, practices also need to balance different types of appointments, including:

• urgent, same day appointments for acute problems
• book ahead appointments for non‑urgent concerns
• follow-ups and routine reviews for long-term conditions such as asthma or diabetes

When you contact the practice, your concern is clinically assessed so we can decide how best to help you, who is most appropriate to deal with your request and how quickly you need to be seen.  This may mean that:

• The practice can deal with your request remotely (for example, issuing a prescription or giving advice)
• You are signposted to another appropriate service, such as a community pharmacy, physiotherapy, or A&E
• You are offered an appointment at the surgery

If your concern is assessed as non‑urgent, you may be asked to wait for the next available routine appointment. If it is assessed as more urgent, you will be given a suitable appointment, which may be with a clinician other than a GP.

We understand that being asked to wait can feel frustrating, especially if you are worried.  However, clinically prioritising requests helps ensure that patients who need urgent care that day can be seen safely.

Sometimes patients agree their problem is not urgent but still feel unhappy about waiting. When non‑urgent problems are seen sooner than clinically needed, it reduces the number of urgent appointments available and can lead to longer waits overall.

Across Gloucestershire in April:

• 44.6% of patients were seen on the same day they contacted their practice
• 71% were seen within two weeks
• For some non‑urgent concerns, where it was safe to do so, around 6% of patients had appointments booked four weeks or more ahead

We ask patients to be understanding of the clinical judgement used to decide safe waiting times. When we suggest support from other parts of the NHS – such as pharmacies or local community and voluntary services – this advice is given carefully and often allows you to get help more quickly.

If you would like to support general practice to improve the care it is able to provide to patients, you may wish to contact your local MP. How general practice is funded and organised has a direct impact on how easily patients can get appointments. You could consider highlighting:

• The need for fairer funding for general practice, which manages most NHS patient contacts (~90%) but receives a relatively tiny share of NHS funding (~7%). Better funding supports more appointments and continuity of care (being able to see the same GP).
• The need for flexibility for practices to organise care locally – so GPs do not have to spend time reviewing routine online requests instead of seeing patients face to face when demand is high.

By working together, we can help make sure that everyone gets the right care, at the right time.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

20/03/2026: Meningitis Outbreak Update

📢 Important Update: Meningococcal (MenB) Vaccination for Students
We have been asked by NHS England to support an urgent vaccination response following an outbreak of meningococcal disease in Kent. While we are a long distance from the area, we want to ensure any local residents who have recently returned home from university or visited Canterbury are protected.
🚨 Please contact us ONLY if you fall into one of these categories:
• University of Kent students who normally live on the Canterbury Campus but have now returned home to our area.
• Students or staff from other Canterbury universities who were advised to take preventative antibiotics due to close contact.
• Anyone who attended Club Chemistry in Canterbury between 5 March and 16 March 2026.
• Sixth form students from Kent schools who have been specifically notified by their school or the UKHSA.
💉 Key Information:
• Eligibility: If you meet the criteria above and have not already received a vaccine at a clinic in Kent, please call us to book your appointment.
If you do NOT meet the criteria above, you are not currently eligible for meningitis B vaccination on the NHS, and if you want the vaccine you will need to pay to have it at a pharmacy or travel clinic.

If you were born on or after 21 July 2001, and for the first time this autumn you are

• Starting university
• Starting at further education college as a residential student

Then you are eligible for a FREE meningitis B vaccine from 20^th July. This can be given as a walk in at any pharmacy, or you can book an appointment using this link

https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/vaccination-and-booking-services/book-a-menb-vaccination-appointment

You do not need to be registered with a GP to use the walk-in service, and you do not need to contact the GP practice to book an appointment.

Have a great time at college or uni!

31/10/2025: Anima – New Online System!

As of the 31st October 2025 we will be moving to an online system. If you wish to request an urgent or routine appointment or submit an administrative request please follow the link below.

https://anima.thirdparty.nhs.uk/o/gl528rpthe

01/10/2025: Online access to appointment booking 

You may have read in the press that GP practices have to offer online systems for requesting appointments from today. 

We are working towards this as fast as we can. Because so many practices are doing this at the same time, the suppliers of the new computer systems seem to be struggling to get all the practices up and running.

We have taken the decision to delay things for a few weeks, until we can be sure the system works properly, to ensure patient safety.

Rest assured, we are working hard to achieve this aim, please bear with us in the meantime, and continue to contact us by phone where possible. 

Thank you.

UK Health Security Agency: Be Tick Aware! See the poster below for more information on Ticks and Lyme Disease

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ug9ZJ3–S3ocZ4Dlo77xtAMqy-IaIXLB/view

Did you know?

Access to your medical records by specific staff members can be restricted.
If you know someone personally who works at the surgery, (eg a family member, friend or someone you know personally) and you do not want them to access your record, please let us know in writing addressed to the Practice Manager

Important letter to all our patients

8th July 2024

Dear patients of Stoke Road Surgery, Following the recent media coverage of patient dissatisfaction with the NHS, we felt it…

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