Contact Us Online

Engage Consult is our electronic consultation system

What Engage Consult does:

• This is an alternative route to the surgery instead of using the telephone.
• You can also find self-help information to support you within Engage Consult. 
• We recommend checking to see if there is something in there that may help you before calling us.

We strongly recommend using NHS Login or creating an account with this service as this enables two-way messaging.

• This can be used for non-urgent medical enquiries and administration queries.
• This is not for prescription requests or urgent medical problems.
• The busiest time for phone calls is 8am to 12am.
• The electronic consultation service may be a quicker way to access care and support
• There are a limited number of clinical and non-clinical engage consult appointments and task requests each day.
• We offer a call-back service on our phone lines to save you waiting on the phone, you don't lose your place in the queue. Please do make use of this.

Information in the Media about Online Access

• You will hear in the media that from 1st October 2025 the Government is requesting GP surgeries to have their online access running between 08:00 and 18:30.
• The messages in the media are not based on the reality of how GP practices are funded and resourced.
• We are supportive of online access at Ball Tree however, we must always work in the interests of our patients and that means safe working.
• We remain committed to providing a mixture of face-to-face, telephone and online consultations.  We we aim to encourage continuity of care whenever possible.

Why Online Access is not straightforward and simple

• We are wanting to be able to provide the safest and fairest system possible for people to access us in a variety of ways.  
• We need to provide care for those in need, provide continuity where possible, signpost people to other services when we are either at our maximum safe capacity or when there is an alternative provider who may be better placed to support.
• We need to be able to distinguish between people who are needing urgent care and those that may need more routine appointments, or who may be able to try self-care.  
• We have not currently been able to open our online access throughout the whole working day.
• Making changes requires a lot of time, thought and alterations to our ways of working and we need to ensure any changes benefit everyone and doesn’t disadvantage anyone. Our most recent change last year was to have a GP stationed in reception to answer our receptions teams queries (including those that have come from online) and help them ensure that people are offered the most appropriate appointment. We already triage much of the care we provide through this route. We have had positive feedback about this change. These GPs are also able to support reception by solving some simple or urgent queries without appointments.
• If we are forced to move quickly to more online access by the Government, then there will be consequences that we don't think would benefit our patients and our service may be less available and accessible than it is now.
• If there are more online queries, alongside phone calls and front desk queries, then Doctors, and the administrative and clinical teams will need to spend more time working through the requests coming in and less time with patients. 
• We must ensure that we do not miss any genuinely urgent or serious clinical problems. The risk of this is much greater if there are many more online requests to process, as we know that some people ask urgent questions within the non-urgent system.
  • The risks of moving towards more online access include:
    • Fewer Face-to-Face appointments (GPs will be triaging)
    • Fewer On-the-Day appointments (GPs will be triaging)
    • Admin questions will take longer to process.
    • Messages will take longer to process.
    • Less chance to see the same GP for ongoing conditions (continuity) - as fewer appointments.
    • All telephone calls would have to go through the same online questionnaires and would take longer.
    • Hospital style waiting lists that could be many weeks long as there will be a build up of requests for non-urgent matters which will have to join a queue.
• We need to balance these risks with the benefits of having more online access.
• We already have more than the average number of GPs for our practice population and we remain very busy.
• There is no new funding for GP practices to fully fund increased online access. The technology available to us is not safe enough for us to use without a person triaging requests throughout the opening hours, despite it being for routine queries only. 
• We are in the process of reviewing our online access system alongside the rest of our access and will continue to do this to ensure we provide safe care within the resources that we have.

Please note: The  online service may close earlier at busier times.

WHY: Every online request is processed by an administrator and then, if needed, a clinician.

• Once the surgery has reached its safe operating capacity, access to online services will close. 
• We only close access when there is no capacity / no person available to process the request.
• We cannot safely receive requests if there is no person available to triage and respond.
• We aim to keep the online system available as long as possible each day.

HOW: You can help us

• Only use the Online System for NON-URGENT matters
• Keep your enquiries simple and clear making sure you give us enough information to help you.  Make sure photographs are clear and well lit.
• Allow us enough time to review your questions during the day before calling us for a follow up
• Use other NHS and local services where more appropriate (Pharmacies / Urgent Care Centres)

PLEASE NOTE:
You will be redirected to the Engage Consult system when you click the link.
Unfortunately, we are not able change the content of this webpage to show whether the system is currently active.
We apologise in advance if Engage Consult is already closed for the day.

Please use this link or sign up for the NHS app to access this service.

ACCESS ENGAGE CONSULT

Why can’t I request my prescription through this system?

We already receive prescription requests through a variety of channels.

Engage Consult has limited capacity so we need to ensure it is used safely and efficiently.

To request a repeat prescription electronically you can sign up to the NHS app or for online access via our reception team.
Online requests will be processed much faster than paper requests

Otherwise you can request with the traditional paper slip.
Please note: It will take longer to process a paper request as there is more work required for the practice team.

We do not take prescription requests over the phone unless there are special circumstances as we have limited phone capacity and also there is more risk of errors.