Job summary
A GP Practice Receptionist at Ribblesdale Medical Practice plays a vital role as the first point of contact for patients, visitors, and healthcare professionals. The position combines strong administrative skills with excellent communication and customer service, ensuring patients receive a positive, safe, and efficient experience when accessing primary care services.
Receptionists are responsible for greeting patients, managing incoming calls, and handling a wide range of enquiries with professionalism, sensitivity, and discretion. They book, amend, and manage patient appointments and care navigation across different services, process repeat prescription requests, and provide information about practice procedures. In doing so, they act as a crucial link between patients and the clinical team, supporting effective patient flow and helping the practice run smoothly.
Main duties of the job
- A GP Receptionist Care Navigator plays a central role in ensuring patients can access the right care, at the right time, in a safe and supportive way. The position combines traditional reception duties with the modern approach of care navigation, where staff help guide patients towards the most appropriate service for their needs.
- Front of House and Patient Support
- Appointment Management
- Care Navigation
- Prescription Administration
- Record Keeping and IT Systems
- Administrative Support
- Communication and Teamwork
- Handling Challenging Situations
About us
Ribblesdale Medical Practice is a well-established GP surgery dedicated to delivering high-quality, patient-centred healthcare to the local community. The practice provides a full range of NHS general medical services alongside a variety of enhanced and specialist clinics designed to meet the diverse needs of its patient population.
The practice team is made up of experienced GPs, advanced nurse practitioners, practice nurses, healthcare assistants, clinical pharmacists, receptionists/care navigators, and a skilled management team. Together, they work collaboratively to ensure patients receive accessible, safe, and effective care. A strong emphasis is placed on continuity of care, patient wellbeing, and the promotion of healthier lifestyles. We work with vulnerable groups such as the Homeless, veterans and those migrating from other countries.
The practice is committed to staff development and wellbeing, recognising that a supported and motivated workforce leads to the best outcomes for patients. Initiatives such as workplace health champions, wellbeing walks, and menopause support demonstrate a holistic approach to looking after both staff and patients.
Job description
Job responsibilities
To ensure patients receive a high quality, professional service and to contribute to the
daily practice routine.
More specifically the role shall encompass various
administrative tasks and the day to day running of the reception area.
You will receive, assist and direct patients in accessing the appropriate service or healthcare professional in line with their requirements using care navigation methods, in a courteous, efficient and effective way, with the patient at the centre of everything we do.
You will provide general administrative assistance to the GP partners and practice manager as required, and at all times project a positive and friendly image to patients and other visitors, whether in person or over the telephone.
Reception of Patients
- Welcoming patients at the Reception desk in a polite and friendly manner.
- Accepting patients on arrival for appointments and routing patient
- appropriately.
- Handling of general enquiries at the reception desk or over the telephone
- Anticipating, preventing and dealing with problems at Reception and in the waiting room.
- Leaving the reception area tidy and ready for incoming colleagues, ensuring that prescriptions promised for collection are ready and passing on information concerning unsolved and urgent problems to your colleagues as a part of handover.
- Dealing with new patients wishing to register at the Surgery, providing them with a New Patient Registration Pack and assisting them to complete the appropriate forms if necessary.
- Dealing with notifications of change of address and/or change of name.
Ask My GP
To manage the incoming patient requests that come into practice via our online portal askmyGP
Route the requests accordingly in line with practice protocols
Flag any urgent requests or home visits to the duty doctor
Use your initiative to note any potentially urgent requests and highlight accordingly to the appropriate clinician.
To respond to patients when administrative tasks have been passed back to reception via a clinician on askmyGP.
Send appropriate preset messages in line with management of requests and care navigation protocols.
- Making new and follow-up appointments with clinicians as per practiced policy.
- Maintain appointments system for GPs, Practice Nurse, pharmacist and minor surgery Clinics.
- Cancel appointments when requested according to the Appointment Cancellation Policy.
- Record requests for home visits on the appointments system, taking address, telephone number and the reason for the visit request.
- Check Duty Doctor rota list in Reception each day and pass on any late calls to the doctor as soon as possible via mobile, if the doctor is out on the road.
- Assist with the ordering of any emergency ambulance at the request of the Clinician.
Prescriptions
- Accept requests for repeat prescriptions via face-to-face, on line, fax or Prescription Box and process as per Repeat Prescribing Policy.
- If request is face-to-face, verify with the patient the time the prescription will be ready for collection (usually 48 hours).
- Check Prescription Box at regular intervals throughout the day.
- Liaise with local Pharmacists re: collections and prescription queries.
- Check emails and process any on line prescriptions requests
- At the end of the day lock signed prescriptions waiting for collection in the designated filing cabinet. Leave key in agreed place.
- Any prescriptions that are more than a month old that have not been collected should be destroyed and coded appropriately on the clinical system, the prescription box should be checked at regular intervals for old prescriptions.
- Empty prescription printers and lock blank prescriptions in agreed place.
- Record incoming and outgoing prescriptions pads according to Prescription Security Protocol.
Telephone
- Answer telephone calls promptly (within 3 rings), politely and discretely so that other patients cannot hear confidential medical information.
- Take and transfer calls accordingly.
- Make appointments, record requests for home visits, deal with queries from other health care professionals and patients.
- Receive and record telephone messages via the pink acute appointments.
Correspondence
- Incoming mail to be sorted and opened by designated member of the reception team; with the receipt of anything marked private and confidential (unless hospital stamped) taken out and passed directly to the named person.
- Sort outgoing mail and frank ready for posting. Place mail for the NHS Milk Run collection in the appropriate place ready for collection.
- Take post to post box as per Ribblesdale Post Rota before last post collection of the day.
- Download the electronic mail and scan any incoming clinical letters onto patients record and route to the appropriate clinician.
Computer
- Daily use of the clinical software system EMIS and Docman following appropriate training.
- Enter data onto patients records in accordance with practice policies.
- Note summarising medical records in accordance with Practice Protocol.
- Maintain Death Register on Docman
- Assist with QOF (Quality and Outcome Framework) using clinical audit and the recall system.
- Scanning/processing of hospital letters and documents, read coding letters as appropriate
- Ensure correspondence, reports and results are filed electronically in the correct patient record.
- Participate in audits
- Register new patients and deduct patients leaving the Practice over the computer links.
Job description
Job responsibilities
To ensure patients receive a high quality, professional service and to contribute to the
daily practice routine.
More specifically the role shall encompass various
administrative tasks and the day to day running of the reception area.
You will receive, assist and direct patients in accessing the appropriate service or healthcare professional in line with their requirements using care navigation methods, in a courteous, efficient and effective way, with the patient at the centre of everything we do.
You will provide general administrative assistance to the GP partners and practice manager as required, and at all times project a positive and friendly image to patients and other visitors, whether in person or over the telephone.
Reception of Patients
- Welcoming patients at the Reception desk in a polite and friendly manner.
- Accepting patients on arrival for appointments and routing patient
- appropriately.
- Handling of general enquiries at the reception desk or over the telephone
- Anticipating, preventing and dealing with problems at Reception and in the waiting room.
- Leaving the reception area tidy and ready for incoming colleagues, ensuring that prescriptions promised for collection are ready and passing on information concerning unsolved and urgent problems to your colleagues as a part of handover.
- Dealing with new patients wishing to register at the Surgery, providing them with a New Patient Registration Pack and assisting them to complete the appropriate forms if necessary.
- Dealing with notifications of change of address and/or change of name.
Ask My GP
To manage the incoming patient requests that come into practice via our online portal askmyGP
Route the requests accordingly in line with practice protocols
Flag any urgent requests or home visits to the duty doctor
Use your initiative to note any potentially urgent requests and highlight accordingly to the appropriate clinician.
To respond to patients when administrative tasks have been passed back to reception via a clinician on askmyGP.
Send appropriate preset messages in line with management of requests and care navigation protocols.
- Making new and follow-up appointments with clinicians as per practiced policy.
- Maintain appointments system for GPs, Practice Nurse, pharmacist and minor surgery Clinics.
- Cancel appointments when requested according to the Appointment Cancellation Policy.
- Record requests for home visits on the appointments system, taking address, telephone number and the reason for the visit request.
- Check Duty Doctor rota list in Reception each day and pass on any late calls to the doctor as soon as possible via mobile, if the doctor is out on the road.
- Assist with the ordering of any emergency ambulance at the request of the Clinician.
Prescriptions
- Accept requests for repeat prescriptions via face-to-face, on line, fax or Prescription Box and process as per Repeat Prescribing Policy.
- If request is face-to-face, verify with the patient the time the prescription will be ready for collection (usually 48 hours).
- Check Prescription Box at regular intervals throughout the day.
- Liaise with local Pharmacists re: collections and prescription queries.
- Check emails and process any on line prescriptions requests
- At the end of the day lock signed prescriptions waiting for collection in the designated filing cabinet. Leave key in agreed place.
- Any prescriptions that are more than a month old that have not been collected should be destroyed and coded appropriately on the clinical system, the prescription box should be checked at regular intervals for old prescriptions.
- Empty prescription printers and lock blank prescriptions in agreed place.
- Record incoming and outgoing prescriptions pads according to Prescription Security Protocol.
Telephone
- Answer telephone calls promptly (within 3 rings), politely and discretely so that other patients cannot hear confidential medical information.
- Take and transfer calls accordingly.
- Make appointments, record requests for home visits, deal with queries from other health care professionals and patients.
- Receive and record telephone messages via the pink acute appointments.
Correspondence
- Incoming mail to be sorted and opened by designated member of the reception team; with the receipt of anything marked private and confidential (unless hospital stamped) taken out and passed directly to the named person.
- Sort outgoing mail and frank ready for posting. Place mail for the NHS Milk Run collection in the appropriate place ready for collection.
- Take post to post box as per Ribblesdale Post Rota before last post collection of the day.
- Download the electronic mail and scan any incoming clinical letters onto patients record and route to the appropriate clinician.
Computer
- Daily use of the clinical software system EMIS and Docman following appropriate training.
- Enter data onto patients records in accordance with practice policies.
- Note summarising medical records in accordance with Practice Protocol.
- Maintain Death Register on Docman
- Assist with QOF (Quality and Outcome Framework) using clinical audit and the recall system.
- Scanning/processing of hospital letters and documents, read coding letters as appropriate
- Ensure correspondence, reports and results are filed electronically in the correct patient record.
- Participate in audits
- Register new patients and deduct patients leaving the Practice over the computer links.
Person Specification
Qualifications
Essential
- 5 GCSEs including Maths and English
Desirable
- Business Administration Level 2 or equivalent
- ECDL IT qualification
- AMSPAR Qualification
- Medical Terminology Certificate
Person Specification
Qualifications
Essential
- 5 GCSEs including Maths and English
Desirable
- Business Administration Level 2 or equivalent
- ECDL IT qualification
- AMSPAR Qualification
- Medical Terminology Certificate
Disclosure and Barring Service Check
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 (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.