As a GP practice, we are currently trying to manage a significant rise in workload which is in part due to a rise in requests from hospitals and other clinics for us to do blood tests/ECGs on their behalf. We have a duty of care to our patients to provide core GP service, which means that we need to be able to offer appointments to our patients for tests that the GPs or nurses at the practice have requested.
The rise in hospital requests is putting a strain on this and meaning our patients are having to wait longer. In addition, patient safety issues can arise when results come back to GPs who are not experienced in managing complex hospital specialist issues.
We have also over the last few years been involved in a project to take blood tests on behalf of the hospital. In this case patients were given a form or blood labels to bring to the surgery and have their test done here with the results copied to the hospital or other clinic to action. We were given a very small amount of funding for this work – in the region of £140 per month. As the workload has risen we are now doing more than 100 blood tests per month which is not sustainable from a capacity point of view.
From October 2024 we have made the decision to withdraw from the Community blood taking project and focus on offering blood tests to our patients that are already being monitored within the practice or have blood tests requested from the surgery. The hospital have a team in place to do blood tests which they request. Your hospital team should arrange this for you.
When you ring the surgery to book an appointment for a blood test, the reception team will ask you who has requested the test and what it is for – this will be to help ensure you are seen by the correct team.
