Every hour every day in a month of the life of St Mary’s
Did you know that in the month of May, St Mary’s Surgery received 11,844 telephone calls from patients?
This means we received 2,961 calls per week or 592 calls per day.
Our surgery phones lines are open for 9.5 hours each working day. So, for that month, we received 62 calls per hour.
You might also not know that in May, the surgery also received some 5,012 requests from patients via askmyGP.
This means we received 1,253 requests per week or 250 per day.
Or 26 askmyGP requests per hour.
| Patient contact in May | Weekly | Daily | Hourly |
| 11,844 phone calls | 2,961 | 592 | 62 |
| 5,012 AMGP requests | 1,253 | 250 | 26 |
| TOTAL | 4,214 | 842 | 88 |
That’s 88 items of patient contact per hour
– every hour –
of every day for the month of May!
This shows just how busy the surgery is all day, every day.
These numbers do not include daily face-to-face appointments, either with GPs or our nurses and healthcare assistants, or queries made at reception. The figures do not include the amount of medication and prescriptions processed daily by our dispensary. And they do not include other essential patient contact work, such as referrals and new patient registrations.
All contact and requests from our patients are taken very seriously. Each one is treated with the care, diligence and thoroughness of service that our patients expect, and that we wish to give.
Therefore, if sometimes patients have to wait for a longer time for a response from the surgery, hopefully these numbers will help you understand why.
Mondays remain our busiest days – both with AMGP and on our phone lines. It would really help the surgery if patients could delay routine or non-urgent requests until later in the week, leaving Mondays freer for urgent queries only.