We provide comprehensive NHS primary care services to help you manage your health and well-being.
We are a large, friendly general practice. We aim to provide a caring and efficient service. We are also committed to preventative medicine in partnership with you.
Our aim is to provide a high quality, caring and personal health care service to our whole patient population by:
- Putting our patients at the centre of what we do
- Having a highly qualified and trained multi-professional integrated primary healthcare team
- Offering our services in a safe, supportive and suitably equipped environment, using technological advances in healthcare systems for our patient’s benefit
We work very closely with our allied Community Nursing, Health Visiting and Specialist Teams to ensure your care is co-ordinated to the highest of standards. We welcome any comments or suggestions you may have.
We offer several ways to contact us including online (eConsult), by phone, and in person. We may also contact you by SMS.
About our appointment system
From Monday 1st September 2025 all requests to see, or speak to, a GP or Nurse Practitioner are to be made by completing an online triage form via our website. Anyone who does not have access to the internet or has difficulty completing a form online will still be able to contact our reception team who can complete the form on your behalf. A family member or friend can also complete the form for you if needed. We offer onlin, telephone, and face to face appointments, with same day and pre-bookable advance appointments available for GPs and nurses.
For all appointments once we receive your request our team will review your query and arrange the most appropriate type of appointment to ensure you get the right care with the right person in the right timeframe. This may mean you are booked a telephone call, directly into a face to face appointment, or asked to provide some further information to assist us eg. to send us a photograph.
Letter introducing our new appointment system
eConsult
From Monday 1st September 2025 Please contact us online to book and appointment with a GP or Nurse Practitioner. Note you can submit both medical and administrative requests.
You do not need a username or password. Our on-call doctor will triage all requests on the same day. Our aim is that you will be directed to the right clinician, at the right place, at the right time, first time!
- If your issue is urgent we will aim for a GP or Nurse Practitioner to see you the same day.
- For routine issues we will aim to see people typically within a week, but at busier times of the year this could be longer. We aim for this never to go beyond 2 weeks.
All requests made to the surgery are treated with importance and are handled confidentially. Additionally, all the requests made will be triaged by the on-call doctor for the day. We hope this will give you the confidence that the care you receive will be allocated to the right person, at the right time, each time you make a consultation request.
We always try to accommodate your choice of practitioner however we may suggest that you see another type of practitioner or service if this is more appropriate to your needs.
Prebookable appointments
We have a proportion of routine GP appointments available for patients to book into, these are released 2 weeks in advance. In addition appointments with our nurses and health care assistants are all available to book in advance.
Urgent problems
We have a proportion of face to face and telephone appointments available that are released each day, for same day problems, with our GPs and Nurses.
How to book appointments
From Monday 1st September 2025 Please contact us online to book and appointment with a GP or Nurse Practitioner. Note you can submit both medical and administrative requests. Please make one appointment for each patient who needs to be seen. We try to keep to time but please be patient if someone before you takes longer than planned. Appointments are normally ten minute slots and so if you have a complicated problem, or more than one problem, please ask for a longer appointment.
Continuity with your clinician
We encourage you to book appointments with the same clinician you have seen before. This means the clinician will have a better understanding of the issues you have had previously and recently. We realise that there can be a wait to see your usual clinician, so please mention if you would prefer to see any clinician who may be available sooner when booking your appointment.
Named Accountable GP
The Practice will ensure that there is a named accountable GP assigned to each patient.
New patients will be allocated a GP at the time of registration.
Your named accountable GP will be the same as your usual GP however, this does not affect your ability to see any GP of your choice as you currently do.
This does not prevent you from seeing any GP in the practice, as you may currently choose to do so. Neither does it guarantee you will see your named GP every time you visit the surgery or give you priority access over other patients to your named GP.
The ‘Named’ GP will:
Take lead responsibility for ensuring that all appropriate services required under the contract with the practice are delivered to you.
Where required, based on the professional judgement of the ‘named’ GP, work with relevant associated health and social care professionals to deliver a multidisciplinary care package that meets your needs.
Ensure that your physical and psychological needs are recognised and responded to by the relevant clinicians in the practice
Ensure that patients over 75 years of age have access to a health check if requested, which is already a requirement of the GP contract regulations.
Acceptable Behaviour Guidance
At Consett Medical Centre we are committed to ensuring everyone is treated with respect and dignity including all patients, their families, carers and our practice team.
All patients are expected to behave in the following manner:
- To be polite and respectful towards all individuals (staff and other patients) in person, on the phone, in writing, and on social media.
- To not make inappropriate or unacceptable remarks to any staff or other patients at the practice including any abusive remarks related to any individuals:
- Age
- Disability
- Gender reassignment
- marriage or civil partnership
- pregnancy
- race
- religion or belief
- sex
- sexual orientation
- To not undertake any form of threatening abuse or violence towards any individual (staff and other patients) at the practice.
- To use our services responsibly including:
- To book routine appointments in accordance with the practice’s policy
- To request urgent appointments only for genuine urgent conditions
- To engage with any remote appointments, we may offer over the telephone (or video)
- To attend face-to-face services where it is important to be seen in person, (including when physically able to do so, rather than requesting a home visit)Attend all appointments on timeCancel any booked appointments that are no longer required
- Request repeat prescriptions in good time (allowing 3 working days until ready to collect), ensuring that all items are ordered together rather than in individual lots
- Use our health care professionals time in an appropriate manner
For example:- do not seek appointments for minor ailments that can be self-treated in the first instancerecognise that the time allocated to an appointment or visit is limited and it may not be possible to deal with all the issues that you would like to raise at a single appointment or visitit may not be possible for health care professionals at the practice to meet all your needs in the manner that you would prefer
- Use our health care professionals time in an appropriate manner
- To respect surgery premises and property.
- To attend the surgery premises for the purpose of engaging with our services.
In return, as a patient you can expect to:
- continue to access all our services, to be provided with respect, dignity and confidentiality.
- to raise any concerns or complaints about your care or our services and that these will be investigated and responded to.
All patients are free to register with a practice of their choice, as long as the practice has an open patient list for new registrations and the patient lives within the practice area.
Any patients who commits any inappropriate or unacceptable behaviours towards a GP, Practice staff, other patients or the surgery premises or property risk being removed from the practice list with 8-days’ notice. We will normally provide a warning letter which will be held on record for 12 months before issuing such a notice.
Any threatening abuse or violent incidents will not be tolerated. Any such incident will be reported to the police and will mean your immediate removal from the practice list and your care transferred to a special allocation scheme which manages violent and aggressive patients.