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Park View, Victoria Way and occasionally Lavender Grove surgery will close for an afternoon if staffing pressures or to avoid lone working. See our monthly News Post with more details of specific opening hours.

Routine waiting times

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Why are routine waiting times longer than they used to be?

Our teams are working incredibly hard every day to meet the demand for urgent and routine care our patients are requesting.

Across all General Practices in England the demand is greater than the capacity available in our teams can meet and we have to make sure urgent needs are met daily. This is why you are experiencing longer waits that were normal in the past for routine care.

We know this is frustrating for our patients and for our staff. We hear this feedback every week, it is of utmost importance to us as a practice, and we know this is really important to you too.

What are we doing?

  • We are working hard to change the current system through which our patients request appointments and are triaged so we can better understand your needs, enabling us to get you to the right appointment with the right person.

  • We meet regularly with Healthwatch, our local patient advocacy team, to make sure we hear from them what our patients and different population groups are telling them about the challenges they are having getting access to us and primary care in general.

  • We are aware that not everyone feels confident using, or has access to the equipment they need to request appointments digitally, so we are developing our non-digital support to those who need that most. We also wish to use this time to further understand the needs of this patient group.

  • We are identifying those who are most vulnerable and who need additional support in order to access us and then we can understand how to provide the care they need

  • We are working with our commissioners to develop the case for developing more urgent care capacity in York to make sure the demand for urgent primary care can be met every day. In this way we will be better able to provide the routine care many of our patients need more quickly.

Update September 2026

We are pleased to say that our routine wait is now around 4 weeks (less than this at some sites) due to some hard work around improving this. We have prioritised recruitment to grow our GP team - five new GPs have started over the last few months, with our final new started being inducted next month. PMG remains a GP training practice and we are dedicated to training the next generation of GPs.

Further developments include the addition of senior GP triage to every routine request that comes through the practice. A GP reviews each form and they may ask the patient to get some tests done before seeing a GP (e.g. blood tests). They will review the symptoms and decide if a face to face appointment or telephone appointment is most appropriate. If there are any concerning symptoms on the form, the GP will ensure an appointment is arranged more swiftly (potentially the same day, or within the week as appropriate). If a patient requests a face to face appointment, we are always happy to arrange this. If you use the prioryCARE form, it really helps us if you can write as much detail about your symptoms (how long been happening, when they started, any other new symptoms) on the form.

Our aim is to improve our routine wait to 2-3 weeks over the coming months. We are reviewing our “access model” which means we are looking at other ways that patients can contact us and other online consulting providers.

Every week, we review feedback received from our patients - via complaints, google reviews, feedback forms and Friends and Family tests. This allows us to learn and develop our service.

Have your say

We welcome all feedback and would encourage you to speak to us about your experience with us or your ideas about what would help you and our communities with accessing the primary care you need. You can use the “Get in touch” contact box on our contact us page. 

You can also contact York Healthwatch on 01904 621133 (choose option 3 for Healthwatch York), or email healthwatch@yorkcvs.org.uk. Website: Home - Healthwatch York

We have an active Patient Engagement Group (PPG) and you are welcome to join this and hear the dates for our future meetings if you want to come along - more information on the Friends of Priory page.