Long Stratton Medical Partnership has an opportunity for an enthusiastic and proactive receptionist to join our team on a part-time basis for 24 - 30 hours per week. The hourly rate is minimum wage for the first 3 month probationary period, rising to £12.81 on successful completion of competencies.
The receptionist provides a professional, efficient, caring and confidential first point of contact for patients, carers and visitors. The post-holder will help patients access the most appropriate service through the practice's total triage model, support the wider practice team and contribute to safe, accurate and responsive day-to-day operations.
Key responsibilities:
- Welcome patients and visitors in a courteous, calm and respectful manner, maintaining privacy at the reception desk and in waiting areas.
- Respond to general enquiries, explain practice procedures and help patients access appropriate clinical, administrative or external services without offering clinical advice.
- Identify urgent, deteriorating or potentially unsafe situations and escalate them immediately in accordance with practice protocols. Reception staff must not make clinical decisions or independently determine clinical priority.
- Support patients who may be distressed, vulnerable, angry, confused or experiencing communication barriers, using appropriate de-escalation and seeking assistance when required.
- Register new and temporary patients promptly and accurately, including processing information received through the digital registration service and checking demographic and contact details.
- Arrange, amend and cancel appointments in line with appointment-booking rules, clinical instructions and the practice's total triage arrangements.
- Process requests for home visits in accordance with the practice protocol, recording all relevant information accurately and escalating the request to the appropriate clinician.
- Manage practice email and shared work queues as allocated, responding or redirecting items promptly and securely.
- Process changes of address, telephone numbers, email addresses, consent and communication preferences accurately, confirming identity and practice boundary requirements where appropriate.
- Follow the practice procedure for reporting and processing patient deaths, ensuring that actions are completed sensitively, accurately and within required timescales.
- Understand the practice complaints procedure, respond professionally to concerns and direct or escalate them to the appropriate person without becoming defensive or attempting to investigate them independently.
- Provide reasonable cover for colleague absence and undertake other duties appropriate to the role, competence and grade when requested by the partners or management team.
- Assist with reasonable shared workplace duties, including keeping reception, staff and refreshment areas clean, tidy and appropriately stocked.
- The role involves frequent use of SystmOne, SystmConnect and X-On Surgery Connect. The post-holder must use each system competently, follow agreed workflows and escalation routes, and maintain accurate contemporaneous records.
For further information, please see the attached job description.
General practice is a challenging environment that requires a calm and caring approach with the ability to work under pressure. The ideal candidate will be a highly motivated team player who has customer service/patient experience, offers excellent communication skills and is I.T. literate.
For further information, please see the attached person specification.
At Long Stratton Medical Partnership, we take pride in being a family-focused, close-knit team; our ‘work family’ is how we often describe ourselves. We offer a supportive, positive culture which is well-lead, and provide regular supervision and training for all staff.
Long Stratton is a small town in south Norfolk, 10 miles from the historic city of Norwich. We have 11,500 patients on our list, a CQC rating of ‘Good’ and operate from both our main site and a branch site in Newton Flotman. We are also a dispensing Practice with a dispensing list of around 5,500 patients. We use SystmOne and run cloud-based telephony which links seamlessly with the clinical system and provides excellent functionality.
We have completed our surgery expansion work with a new wing being added to include 7 clinical rooms. The reason for the expansion is that Long Stratton is being bypassed, 2,000 new homes are planned and therefore potentially 5,000-6,000 new patients will be joining us.
Disclosure and Barring Service Check
Please note this post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service to check for any previous criminal convictions.
