The practice offers eConsult to patients as another method of contacting the practice with concerns and medical queries. This potentially avoids the need for you to wait on a phone line to speak to one of the reception team and a lot of requests can be dealt with by a direct reply back to you either from the reception team with more information or by the Triage GP themselves. 

Our eConsult service is open Monday to Friday, from 6am to 11am. We understand that some patients would like this to be open for longer but with the volume of requests that we receive, we are not currently in the position to be able to offer this 24/7 or for longer throughout the day. 

eConsult should NOT be used for emergencies and we would ask that you contact the practice by telephone instead if you need to speak to someone on the same day. 

How to submit an eConsult:

To submit an eConsult to the practice during the opening times, please do this via the Elgin Heath Centre website. On the Homepage of the website, there is a box that shows eConsult. Once you click on this, this will then take you to the eConsult page with more information. You can then click on the red/orange box that shows “Get Started”. 

You can submit an eConsult for yourself, for someone else such as a child or parent or on behalf of a friend etc. As long as you complete the questions and information with the correct patient details, we can action them for you.  

How we process eConsults:

eConsults submitted to us are actioned by the reception team and triaged to the most appropriate person or team at the practice. The eConsult is downloaded from the system and uploaded into your medical notes. The reception team then follow a guide that was designed by GPs at the practice and forward your eConsult to the right person or add to the Triage list for the following day. Every day, there is a GP working through the list of received eConsults who will make the final decision of who you would need to see or speak to based on the content of your eConsult. This could be, for example, the Duty Team for same day assistance, the family planning team or an appointment with one of the GPs. 

Reviews:

Some clinicians at the practice ask for reviews to be submitted to them via eConsult and eConsult provide the content for these. These can be Asthma reviews, HRT reviews or Contraception Reviews etc. These are available 24/7 rather than only during our opening times.

If you have been asked to submit a review to us, please do this on the same page that you would submit a normal eConsult to us on. Instead of using the normal "Get Started" button, there is a section towards the bottom of the page titled Reviews and this contains a link to the review page of eConsult where you will find the review that you need. As above, these are available 24/7.

The webpage for the reviews is: Reviews - The Maryhill Group Practice (webgp.com)

Feedback:

At the end of every eConsult, you are asked if you would like to submit feedback to the practice. We would ask that if you have the time, please complete this as the comments are very helpful for us to understand if patients like the service. In the first 8 months of 2024 (to the end of August), we received 135 feedback comments.  These are split into 5 categories for us and the results are below:

Some of the more common comments that we have received for the dissatisfied categories are addressed below. 

“The practice will switch it off early if they are too busy”

This is not true. It is open from 6am to 11am every working day however this doesn’t include any NHS Grampian or UK bank holidays. We cannot control the opening times at the switch of a button and we have never switched it off early. Unfortunately, we are not in the position to open this for longer right now but if this changes in the future, we will let everyone know.

“Simply want a face to face appointment with a GP!”, ”It's not possible to make an appointment by telephone as you are referred by reception to the eConsult service.” and "It took longer to fill in the form than just phoning to ask for an appointment."

You do not have to use eConsult if you do not want to. You can phone us and ask for a GP appointment. Bear in mind that depending on what the condition is, there could be a more qualified specialist at the practice that would be better for you to see. You do not always have to see a GP, but if you want to see one, please just phone and ask.  

“The fact you have to wait up to 48hrs is very inconvenient and not practical”

If your issue is an urgent one or you are looking for earlier assistance, please call the practice instead. eConsults received in the morning are triaged for the following day and then we will get back to you once they have been reviewed. We ask that you do not use eConsult for urgent matters. 

When you submit an eConsult to us, you will see at the confirmation page that this gives us until 6:30pm the following working day to reply to you. This could be from the Duty Team if you eConsult needs urgent attention, the Triage GP if they can help you over the phone or possibly most likely by the reception team, by telephone or by replying to your eConsult offering you an appointment, as triaged by the GP.  

If you have not heard from us by the 6:30pm deadline, please do get in touch with us. Unfortunately, sometimes errors do happen and the odd eConsult can be missed so we need to check this for you.

“Would much rather see a doctor but the wait is far too long”

Our GPs are mostly booked up for a couple of weeks at a time. Our GPs still need to have their holidays and during the popular times, the waiting times for an appointment with a GP do get a bit longer for patients. We have a Duty Team that can deal with many acute issues and this would usually involve an appointment on the same day, or in the next few days. Not everything has to be dealt with by a GP.

"The econsult asks what you would like to happen and despite stating this I was still palmed off with a physio appointment rather than being able to speak to a doctor"

You can absolutely ask to be seen by someone specific, be this one of the GPs or one of the Advanced Clinicians at the practice but in some cases, they are not the correct person for you to see and this is why you were offered an appointment with one of the physiotherapy team. This is even more appropriate if your condition was that of a musculoskeletal concern - a physio is by far the best person for you to see for this type of query in the first instance.

Is eConsult being switched off?:

The eConsult service is not going anywhere. We are aware that some other local practices have turned theirs off and we've had a number of patients ask us the same question but please be assured that we are keeping ours switched on as normal and you will be able to continue to use this to get in touch with us.