A Message from Arundel Surgery
We are pleased to inform our patients that the surgery will be open as normal today after a deep clean. We are still lacking quite a few staff (particularly nurses) but will try to operate as normal.
Once again we would ask people not to keep calling about Covid vaccinations as this is really blocking up our phone lines. We appreciate that people are concerned about when they or their family are going to get their vaccinations but we want to reassure you that Arundel patients are being vaccinated at the Bognor hub.
The organisation of these vaccinations is being overseen by IPC, NOT the surgery so we have no influence on the booking system (calling the surgery about this is like calling Sainsbury’s to ask when your Tesco delivery is going to be!) Just because you haven’t been called yet does not mean you have been missed – there are a huge number of people to get through.
Lots of people are also expressing fear that they will miss their call for a vaccine. We can reassure you that IPC’s system will not miss you. Patients with a mobile are sent an SMS with a link to self-book. If they don’t respond they are called 24-48 hours later. Patients without a mobile are simply called. For all who are called, IPC will try twice (on two different days). If they have two failed attempts then they will appear on a refreshed list the following week to try again.
We would also point out that contrary to what you might have heard in the press, vaccine supply locally is still not consistent so the hub is not able to run 7 days per week. The days vaccines are administered depends on the days it is delivered and therefore the days it can be stored before becoming inactive. Obviously no doses should be wasted so the logistics of booking people in when you don’t know if the vaccine will arrive or not is very difficult!
Our website is being kept updated too for those not on Facebook. Those with no internet access are difficult to reach so we appreciate those of you who are helping to spread this information by word of mouth or other groups.