By Sarah.G

In 2013, the first online consultation in south east London in the Hurley Group was made. Since then, it has slowly grown and now over 3,200 GP Surgeries, including ours, offer eConsults. EConsult is a digital triage platform, allowing patients to seek advice and help from their GP Surgery. 

It is ideal to use as it allows patients to not have to wait in the queue on the phone or come in to book an appointment.

When not to use our eConsult platform?

Before we explain how to complete an eConsult form, please know that certain health issues should not be completed via this digital platform. For example, it should not be used for an emergency due to the fact that you won’t be receiving a response straight away. Instead, if something is an emergency, please go to A&E, a walk-in-centre, or call 111/999 for help.

If the patient that you are inquiring is under six months of age, you will not be able to fill out the form. Instead, please call the practice or the other alternative which we mentioned above. EConsults are only for patients over six months, but anyone below sixteen, the form has to be completed by a parent or guardian.  

If you are trying to book for a cervical smear or a travel vaccination, please actually call us at the surgery as we will have to ask you certain questions relating to these types of appointments. 

Lastly, do not request prescriptions via eConsults, instead you can email us at reception.gcs@nhs.net or ask your nominated pharmacy, do it in person with the form in our surgery, or via the NHS app. 

How to complete an eConsult form?

On the first page of our website, you will see seven boxes with the third one with the words ‘eConsult Service’, clicking on that will take you to another page where you can fill out the form. This page will be live from eight in the morning, and the eConsult page will shut either automatically at five-thirty in the evening, or when we have reached maximum capacity. 

At one point, it will ask if you would like to login in via your NHS App, if you do not have one or don’t know your login details you can still carry on.

When our eConsult platform is open, the form will start with four choices for you to choose from, these are:

1. Adult health problems
2. Child health problems
3. Sick notes, test results or administrative help
4. Reviews for long term conditions, medication or contraception

When choosing option one, two, or four it will take you to a list of health issues or a list of conditions to be reviewed. Please click on the one that relates to you. 

From then on, a number of questions will be asked and all you have to do is simply answer, some of these questions you will need to click on the answer, otherwise you will have a chance to write in a textbox. In the places where you can write, please include if a face to face appointment would work better and explain as much as possible if you have already seen someone regarding the issue — this is to make sure that when the doctor triages it, they will know who is best to book you with. 

You may also be asked to take a photo, they will only ask you this depending on the health issue you have chosen, such as if you have a rash; uploading an image of it will allow the doctor to see it without having to be in person. 

Once you have completed the form, and it is sent to Garden City Surgery, you will receive an email with your eConsult form. 

What happens to the eConsult once Garden City Surgery receives it?

At our surgery, we have twenty-five eConsult slots available per day on our appointment system, these are added by the receptionist. This is why sometimes, depending on the query, someone at reception may contact you and see if you are able to come in on that day due to having an appointment available with a clinician that can help you. 

Otherwise, the receptionist will add it to the next working day eConsult slots, meaning if you do an eConsult on Friday, you most likely will hear back on the Monday. EConsults are looked at by the duty doctor for the day, they will read through your answers and triage it to what is appropriate. This might mean, they could call you to discuss more, or they will send a text message saying someone will contact you on a certain day or if you could come in, giving a day and time. Please know that if you do receive a text message about an appointment, it doesn’t mean you will necessarily see Dr Chand or Dr Wood. But you will be seen by a clinician that can help you with your health concerns. 

If you do receive a text message to come in and realise that you might not be able to come in due to other prior arrangements, please do call and we will see if we are able to help you as much as possible. 

We hope this article helps you understand how eConsult works. Please give it a try, but remember eConsult can be sensitive to the wording due to it being engineered with A.I, meaning certain words may flag up and suggest you to call the surgery instead. Please don’t worry if this does happen, instead, if you do feel like it is quite urgent, please call, but if not, go back and see if there are any areas you can answer slightly differently.