Named Accountable GP

All registered patients have a named doctor who has overall responsibility for their care and support. Your registered GP is also your named accountable GP.

Your allocated GP will be responsible for the provision of your healthcare. However, if you choose to see another doctor at the surgery you are entirely free to go on doing so. If you are unsure of who is your allocated doctor please ask at reception.

Patients have the right to express a preference of doctor on their records. However, the practice may not always be able to comply with your request. If this is the case, we will explain why.

The named accountable GP will take responsibility for the co-ordination of all appropriate services and ensure that they are delivered to each of their patients where required (based on the GP's clinical judgment) to each of their patients.

The British Medical Association (BMA) advises that the role of the named GP will not:

• Take on vicarious responsibility for the work of other doctors or health professionals
• Take on 24-hour responsibility for the patient, or have to change their working hours
• Imply personal availability for GPs throughout the working week
• Be the only GP or clinician who will provide care to that patient

Please note that whenever a GP leaves or joins the partnership, the health authority reallocates the patient lists. It may be that your named GP will change under such circumstances. We are not able to contact patients individually about such changes, but we will publicise any partnership changes and advise patients wishing to know who their named GP is to ask at the surgery.

Continuity can be defined as “the extent to which a person experiences an ongoing relationship with a clinician, and the coordinated clinical care that progresses smoothly as the patient moves between different parts of the health service”. Evidence suggests that patients experiencing continuity are more likely to have positive health outcomes.

Where possible, Vine Medical Group will enable continuity of care for patients accessing our services. A patient is also able to specify their preference to be seen by a specific clinician when they request an appointment. However, we will not compromise care if the clinician a patient has seen before is unavailable, and we will book a patient with the most appropriate clinician available in these instances.