The Vale Medical Centre

Hello, hope you are all well and keeping safe

I was wondering if someone has been to or near The Vale Medical Centre these days? I do need to register with the GP and I’m a bit wary it will be quite busy due to the vaccination programme,i would rather not be around too many people.

I their website they mention you can leave the forms in their mailbox, has anyone done it?

Thank you for taking the time to read the post, after a year of covid the most regular of things take additional planning (and panic)

I believe you can register entirely electronically.

There is a registration form (GMS1 and survey) which you can fill and email back to them. The form can be downloaded here: Register at The Vale Medical Centre

I used Adobe to ‘Sign & Fill’ the form, then emailed it to the surgery.

The only of thing was they didn’t respond, but when I phoned them a few weeks later they had happily processed it and I was registered. This was about a year ago.

I left the forms in the mailbox last month and got an email confirmation the next day.

I don’t think they are doing vaccinations there (my partner is registered there but was sent to Sydenham Green for vaccination by a Dr from Vale Medical Centre).

Hi Andrea,

I just popped down there on Tuesday to fill out the registration form and submit it via the postbox you mention, if you’re one of the privileged elites who own a printer then you can just print, fill out at home and drop it in the postbox with no human interaction. If like me you’re a simple pedestrian then you buzz on their intercom, ask for the form to register and they basically throw it out the front door for you to fill out outside and drop it off.

Hope that helps!

Ryan

Very hard to get an appointment currently. You can only book for the current day and only by phone. I queued on the phone for 60 minutes only to be told that there were no appointments.

Not sure if it will work the same way, but I could not get an appointment online at the Jenner Practice earlier this year, so ended up calling 111. I then had a doctor to call me back, could send a photo through after a chat, and they then booked a hospital appointment for me at Kings all without physically seeing someone, so calling 111 might be a good alternative. I think I did go into the Jenner though to collect my Hospital appointment letter. I actually preferred this way to going in - though it would be more difficult if you didn’t have a smart phone and they wanted to do a video call etc which I have also done in the past.

I’ve managed to get a same day appt at Perry Vale recently by phoning just as they open at 8 am and joining the phone queue which was moving quickly as they allocate all the appts. If you phone much later all the slots for that day are gone already.

Yes same here. I even called back the next day at 8:01 am and I was already 40th in line!!!

You only get a phone call when you ring! I had made 2 e.consults & had 4 phone calls, before resorting to say I will go to urgent care & got extremely upset before I finally got an appointment at the Tessa Jowell centre. I had only broken my fibula bone in my lower leg near the ankle! The e.consults & phone calls had also included talking about my injured arm.
What gets me is that by the time they have read the e consult & rung you up, they could have seen you!

agree that Econsult is rubbish-My GP (jenner) asked me to update on an ongoing condition that I’m being treated for to see if I needed a referral to a specialist.
E-consult was the only way I could contact the gp with an update and boy-was it longwinded tricky to upload photos to and generally not user friendly.
I submitted 3 e-consults in the end because I kept getting timed out whilst trying to submit images and twice got a message to contact 101 as a matter of urgency (I knew this was a clear mistake on the part of econsult as it is not a condition that requires emergency treatment (eczema !)
I still after 3 months haven’t been able to actually see a GP and dont hold out any hope of doing so for the foreseeable
It appears that all roads lead to filling in forms on econsult that then lead to a 10 min call with the gp 2 days later and round and round in circles.
It frustrates me that friends with private health insurance can get to see an actual doctor within days but I’ve lost hope.

I think we have all lost hope.
I have an appointment with Rheumatology on Friday, & a telephone consultation with a physio (she/he visits my GP surgery on a Friday) how on earth can they tell what’s wrong without seeing me?
On saying that my friend has been treated for cancer recently at Guys. She was treated really well & is now in remission. In the middle of this she had a stroke & was admitted to Lewisham. Luckily she is ok, but was just given a piece of paper by the physio for her left arm. So she asked for someone to show her how to do the exercises, & was told the physio will ring her on the 19th July! This was about 6 weeks ago! She is getting better, thanks to go to tai chi & chair yoga, but even so….

I haven’t used econsult and I haven’t actually had issues getting a telephone consultation at my practice and where it was necessary to be physically seen I have seen people, although that has meant two appointments instead of one. The one thing I don’t like is that I don’t think they are managing test results any more but are expecting you to look up your own results and then make an appointment to discuss which means you can see something that may be worrying or confusing and then not have a chance to get the proper medical context until a day or so later.

That said, I think my practice has managed the situation pretty well and certainly a lot better than many I’ve heard aboutso I consider myself pretty lucky. I still think it would be nice to be able to get back to being able to book a face to face appointment straight off though, in the old days!

Following a blood test, I got a call to make an appointment. But that may have been due to a need to discuss the results.

Oh yes my practice are quick enough to ring or text me to make an appointment if something is wrong with a blood test!

Seems impossible these days even if you call exactly at 8 AM. I was told by reception that they had a solid queue out to the gate (that must be at least 40 people?). So perhaps the way now is to queue on the street from 07.30?

Yesterday I was told by reception that some bookable appointments are released at 9 PM every day, but that wasn’t the case last night.

The Vale has recently changed their phone system, and it no longer tells you your position in the queue. New but definitely not improved - no wonder they have felt it necessary to have an outgoing warning message that callers must be nice to staff.

Seems to have been a change of management or ownership, but there is no info at Companies House regarding Aplos Health Primary Care Network Ltd which is now listed on the Vale’s website.

The One Health Lewisham website gives an email address for enquiries, but it’s sending this message - ‘thank you for your email - This email is no longer in use’
Does anything work in Lewisham?

I noticed this change after Stuart Hall left (the Assistant Practice Manager, not the It’s a Knockout presenter). Definitely not for the better.

I hope we’re not going to discover that our GP services are now owned by an off-shore entity, like is the case for some care homes in England.

It looks like a number of the local GPs now form part of Aplos Health, with Woolstone Medical Centre being the ‘lead’ practice.

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