Become a Safe Surgery – join our network

Sign up your practice here

A Safe Surgery can be any GP practice which commits to taking steps to tackle the barriers faced by many migrants in accessing healthcare. At a minimum, this means declaring your practice a ‘Safe Surgery’ for everyone and ensuring that lack of ID or proof of address, immigration status or language are not barriers to patient registration.

Safe Surgeries recognise the barriers to healthcare access that exist, particularly for migrants in vulnerable circumstances, and believe that small changes in practice can make a difference. They are willing to lead by example and work to ensure that nobody in their community is excluded.

What support is available?

We support practices who sign up as Safe Surgeries by offering:

• User-friendly resources to support practice staff, like our Toolkit, simple guides to NHS entitlement and translated patient-facing posters;
• Network events to facilitate learning and collaboration between members;
• Training for clinical and non-clinical staff on migrants’ entitlement to NHS care common barriers and good practice;
• Our quarterly newsletter, providing news and case studies from members, analysis of relevant policy changes, new research, events and other resources.

Why should my practice sign up?

As well as the opportunity to better advocate for your patients, becoming a Safe Surgery offers GP practices additional benefits:

• Support to fulfil contract obligations as defined in NHS England guidelines e.g. preventing ID and proof of address being barriers to registration;
• Support successful CQC inspections by helping practices deliver an Effective, Responsive and Caring service;
• Support staff learning and skills-building through free training, information-sharing and resources;
• Membership of a community of providers which actively promotes a better NHS, helping to tackle health inequalities and provide accessible healthcare for those that need it.

Sign up your practice here

For more information, contact safesurgeries@doctorsoftheworld.org.uk.