At Beech House Medical Practice, as well as the reception desk at ground floor their is a first floor office where all the administration work is done. It is here that reception staff, secretaries, the prescription clerk and manager are based working from 8am to 6.45pm fulfilling all the administration responsibilities which are involved in running a large and busy medical practice. This includes answering phones, making appointments for patients when they phone in, telephoning patients with test results, and handling queries.

The staffing for the telephone system works as follows:

• There is 1 receptionist on duty at the front desk at all times (2 during very busy periods) whilst the surgery is open and in addition to this between 2 – 6 members of staff (exact number depends on the rota)  are upstairs throughout the day available to answer the phone.
• There are 2 telephone numbers – one for enquiries (483 6222) and one for appointments (487 3335).
• Each of the two different numbers can have 4 calls coming through at the same time. At any one time 8 calls can be coming through to the surgery.
• The appointments line comes through to the reception desk at first, it will then divert to the main office upstairs if the call cannot be answered within 10-15 seconds. Staff both upstairs and downstairs answer the next incoming call as soon as they possibly can once they have finished their current call. 
• The priority for the receptionist on the front desk is to deal with patient bookings & arrivals, patient queries (please note due to the open plan nature of the reception area patient confidentiality is essential and some enquiries may be more suitable over the phone). The receptionist will also do their best in dealing with any of your prescription queries.
• The priority for reception staff upstairs is to answer the enquiry’s line and answer any diverted calls from downstairs.
• Depending on the nature of the enquiry upstairs it can take different amounts of time to complete a call before a receptionist can then answer the next incoming call.
• During busy periods where contact with the surgery is difficult due to large income of calls we hope you understand that we are dealing with getting your call answered as soon as possible.