All consultations are by appointment only and are available during our opening hours.
Only one patient can be seen per appointment. Please make a separate appointment for each person if multiple people need to be seen.
Booking an appointment
At Hall Green Health, you can request an appointment using one of these methods:
- use our appointment request form
- phone us on 0121 777 3500
- come in to speak to our staff onsite if you need support to book online
When you get in touch, we’ll ask what you need help with. We will use the information you give us to choose the most suitable doctor, nurse or health professional to help you.
Requesting an appointment online
We would encourage all patients, who can do so, to use our online request system, Blinx. This will prevent you needing to queue on the telephone and keep lines free for those who do not have internet access. Completing an Blinx request yourself also provides you with more discretion should you prefer not to discuss your medical problem with one of our receptionists.
Blinx seamlessly and confidentially integrates with your medical record bringing improvements to how you access care and appointments and how our staff assess your condition.
Blinx allows our Clinical Team to continue to improve access times by helping us to direct you to the most appropriate care for your medical needs. This ensures we make use of our limited resources in the most safe and efficient way. All appointments will continue to be offered according to clinical urgency and need.
Your request will be handled in exactly the same manner, whether you complete the Blinx request online yourself or contact us via telephone – where our receptionists will ask the same questions to ensure equity of access for all patients.
Non-urgent advice: Response Timeframe
Please do not use this service for any urgent medical queries as this service is only monitored Monday to Friday, 8:30am to 6:30pm. Your request will be triaged and the appropriate member of staff will action your request.
We aim to respond to all requests within one working day during our opening hours.
Your appointment
However you choose to contact us, we may offer you a consultation:
- by phone
- face to face at the surgery
- on a video call
- by text or email
Appointments by phone, video call or by text or email can be more flexible and often means you get help sooner.
Failure to attend appointments (DNAs)
Failure to attend appointments is often called a Did not attend (DNA).
Not attending appointments is a waste of NHS resources.
Repeat non-attendees will receive a letter of caution and may result in being removed from the practice list.
Non-urgent advice: Help us to help our patients
Please give us as much notice as possible. This is to allow the appointment to be used by another patient in need.
Cancelling or changing an appointment
To cancel your appointment:
- follow the instructions in your appointment reminder text message
- use your NHS account (through the NHS website or NHS App)
- use Patient Access
- phone us on 0121 777 3500 (we now have an automated service available 24/7)
Our clinical team
Hall Green Health employs a large range of clinicians. These clinicians are all appropriately trained and supported by our duty doctors.
As part of our triage, we may book you with one of our clinicians, other than a GP, where appropriate. These decisions are made based on the information that you provide when requesting an appointment. Please provide as much accurate information as possible to ensure that you are booked with right person.
If you need help when we are closed
Extended Access
Community Care Primary Care Network is running an Extended Access service for its practices. This Extended Access Hub is located at Hall Green Health.
This service is able to offer appointments in the evenings and weekends. This service can only deal with appointments within these hours and cannot book appointments into the practice’s day time appointments.
The public phone number for this purpose is 0121 325 5530.
BADGER
When the practice is closed, requests for emergency treatment will be dealt with by our out-of-hours service, BADGER.
BADGER can be contacted on 0121 766 2100.
When contacting an out-of-hours service, they may ask for you to be seen at a location other than Hall Green Health, including South Birmingham Urgent Treatment Centre.
Walk-in Blood Clinic
This service is available to patients who are registered at Hall Green Health and have been requested to have a blood test by their GP. Chronic disease patients (Diabetes and Cardiovascular) have separately arranged appointments so should not attend the walk-in blood clinic.
Please note that the walk-in clinic may need to close early if all the slots are filled.
If you need medical help now, use NHS 111 online or call 111.
NHS 111 online is for people aged 5 and over. Call 111 if you need help for a child under 5.
Call 999 in a medical or mental health emergency. This is when someone is seriously ill or injured and their life is at risk.
If you need help with your appointment
Please tell us:
- if there’s a specific doctor, nurse or other health professional you would prefer to respond
- if you would prefer to consult with the doctor or nurse by phone, face-to-face, by video call or by text or email
- if you need an interpreter
- if you have any other access or communication needs
Home visits
Home visits are for people who are truly housebound or whose medical condition means they are too ill to travel.
Patients are requested to telephone before 10.30am if a visit is required that day. Only medically urgent visits will be arranged after that time. Please give the receptionist as much information as possible to enable the doctor to prioritise house calls.
We feel that modern health care can best be delivered in a health care setting and therefore we try to discourage home visits. Individual circumstances may make a home visit desirable but please remember that visits by a doctor are not appropriate for common childhood illnesses, headache, earache, tummy bugs, sore throats or flu.
You may not be fit to travel by bus or to walk, but car transport is often available from friends, relatives or taxis. It is not harmful to take a child with a respiratory infection or fever outside.
If you do need a home visit, call our Reception team on 0121 777 3500 and select option 1.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I book an appointment at Hall Green Health?
The easiest way to book an appointment is to fill out the online request form on our website. We aim to reply to all online requests within 1 working day, so the form should not be used for emergencies.
You can request an appointment by telephone however we receive a very high number of calls each day, meaning waiting times can be long. This is why we ask everyone who has web access to submit their requests online, leaving the phone lines for urgent problems and people who can’t use the internet.
Please include a good amount of detail in your request, as we will not be able to process it without.
What happens when I have requested an appointment?
All requests are reviewed by a clinician, who will decide one the best way to handle it, as well as how urgent the problem is. They will then offer one the following:
- An appointment with a GP or AHP (see below), either on the same day (for urgent problems), or in the next few days or weeks (for routine problems).
- Treatment or advice without the need for an appointment, for simple problems
- Advice to contact services such as the local pharmacy or urgent treatment centre
- Advice to attend A&E if your problem is an emergency or too serious to be managed by a GP
Why can’t I book an appointment directly online or through Patient Access?
All appointment requests must be reviewed before booking, to make sure they are managed and directed correctly, and that our appointments are given to those who need them most.
We aim to direct patients to the right place or person, first time around, and avoid waste of expert clinician time. We feel the current system for booking appointments is the best way to do this.
Why can I not request an appointment in person at the front desk?
As above, all requests must be reviewed by a clinician. If our front desk staff took appointment requests, they would have to leave the desk to talk to the clinician each time, leading to long queues in the reception area for people who already have appointments or other queries.
Why have I not been booked an appointment on the same day?
The clinician reviewing your request will decide whether it needs to be seen urgently or can safely wait for a number of days or weeks. By booking less urgent problems on future days, we can keep a safe number of on-the-day appointments for people who need urgent assessment.
Why don’t you have more appointments to offer?
There is currently a national shortage of GPs, which has gotten worse due to the recent pandemic. Hall Green Health is a GP surgery and not a walk-in centre or A&E department; when we are full, we are not able to see any more patients. If we did, our clinicians would not have enough time to fully assess and manage each patient, which would not be safe.
Why has my appointment not been booked with a GP?
To provide the best possible service for our patients, the Partners of Hall Green Health have appointed the following Additional Healthcare Professionals (AHPs) to support us:
- paramedics
- physician associates
- advanced nurse practitioners
- clinical nurse specialists
- a mental health practitioner
- a first contact physiotherapist
Each of these clinicians are important members of our team and have valuable skills and knowledge that may equally or better suit your needs than a GP. If needed, they always have access to supervision and advice from the on-call GP.
We use the skills of our extended clinical team appropriately so that our GP appointments are available for problems that cannot be managed by anybody else.
I have been booked a telephone consultation, why can’t I see my GP face to face?
A lot of problems can be assessed over the phone, as specific symptoms often can tell us enough about what’s happening to make a diagnosis or suggest further tests. The person reviewing your appointment request can assess whether your problem might need to be managed in person if so, book a face-to-face appointment straight away.
If you have a telephone consultation and the clinician feels they need to see you in person after hearing your symptoms, they can also book this themselves.
By offering telephone and video consultations, we can give our patients a way to receive care that is easier for them as it doesn’t require the time, effort or cost of coming to us in person. It also avoids having lots of people sitting in the waiting room at once, in turn avoiding the spread of infectious diseases to our vulnerable patients and staff members.