NHS – Brockwood Medical Practice clarifies how telephone appointments work!

We had some patient feedback regarding the timings of telephone appointments wanting to understand why we are unable to specify a time for these so I wanted to clarify how our telephone appointments operate.

When a telephone appointment is booked unfortunately, we are unable to provide patients with an exact time that the GP will call. Telephone appointments are scheduled within clinic sessions rather than at a specific call time.

This is because telephone consultations are often incorporated into busy clinical sessions alongside face-to-face appointments. GP clinics can be affected by factors outside of their control, including complex consultations, urgent clinical issues, interruptions, and appointments that overrun. To manage workloads safely and efficiently, clinicians frequently use telephone appointments to catch up when face-to-face appointments have finished, when there is a DNA (Did Not Attend) appointment, or at the end of a surgery session.

As a result, patients may receive their call at any point during the allocated session rather than at a predetermined time. We therefore advise patients to keep their phone available and ensure we have the correct contact number on record.

To help manage expectations, our appointment confirmation text message advises patients that telephone appointments may not take place at the specific time shown and that the call could be made at any time during the relevant clinical session. We therefore ask patients to keep their phone available throughout that period.

Published 28tj September 2026