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Welcome , to the first Ivy Court Newsletter of the year and apologies that it’s been a few months since the last one. Not surprisingly we’ve been pretty busy!
Over the last 6 months there have been so many positive things going on behind the scenes, which I wanted to let you know about.
We have appointed several new members of staff across the whole surgery team.
Lee Weeks whom many of you will know at front of house is our new Patient Liaison Officer (PLO) Team Leader and we have added to our PLO team with Alannah joining us from another surgery.
Having had shortages in our Nursing team we now are back to a full complement. Leanne, one of the student nurses we trained has started working at the surgery, Sister Emma has re-joined the team and Sister Bronwen is back from maternity leave. Karen has re-joined us as a Health Care Assistant and Jo, one of our PLOs, has retrained as a Phlebotomist to add to her administrative role supporting the Nursing team. This gives us the ability to extend the nursing services we already offer.
Our Dispensary and prescription teams are dealing with greater numbers of prescriptions than ever before and doing so amazingly well. To support this increased workload we have employed an additional dispenser.
Our new GP assistants are settled in, dealing with and coding the hundreds of incoming clinical letters.
Our new Operational team are managing a vast amount of unseen clinical data to ensure you receive the best possible clinical care. There are new IT solutions developed by our IT lead Dr Watts to maximise the safe prescribing of medications and streamline many of our GP processes. The Quality and Outcomes framework (QOF) measures how successful a practice has been in achieving clinical standards. They are set across a wide range of conditions from Blood Pressure and Asthma to Dementia and care for patients with Learning Disabilities. The hard work of the whole team has led to an amazing year-end QOF achievement of 97.6%, which gives you an indication of how well you are being cared for.
The turnaround times for emergency and routine referrals have been reduced considerably due to the hard work of our excellent secretarial team.
We have had several very positive in-house training events and our internal systems and communication processes have been reviewed and are now functioning better than ever.
Our expanded GP training programme, which we have worked hard on over the last few years, has delivered many new locally-trained GPs which we are desperately short of in our locality.
And I am delighted to tell you that one of those trainees, Dr Naheed Sumaira, has been interviewed and appointed to become the latest addition to our salaried workforce. It is so encouraging that for the first time in many years we were able to choose from multiple applicants for this post.
After the recent years of transition, we now have a much more stable workforce who are all committed to Ivy Court and to deliver the best possible care to you our patients.
I can assure you that we are always looking at what we can do to improve the services we already offer. For instance, one area that has been challenging nationally, for many reasons, is Continuity of Care. We know you would like to be able to see the same GP more often and the stability of our GP workforce and the improved systems at the practice means that this is something we can develop further, as we all recognise that this leads to the better health outcomes that we all want.
We are always keen to listen and to hear your views and will be planning a patient survey shortly.
Likewise, we will also be working more collaboratively with our enthusiastic Patient Participation Group over the coming months, so watch this space! They have already been busy this year with a Medicines Amnesty, where an immense amount of unused drugs (over £2000 in just under 3 weeks) were returned to our Dispensary. Another amnesty is planned for later in the year. They also held a successful Menopause Information evening at the surgery last month. If you wish to find out more they can be contacted at PPG@ivycourtsurgery.co.uk
I am proud to say that Ivy Court now has the securest foundations since pre-Covid to deliver on our primary aim, which is simply to offer the best and safest possible care for you and your families, however, it is important that you know the scale of the ongoing challenges we face.
As I have explained in some depth in previous newsletters, UK General Practice is in a very different state to how it was when I started as a GP here over 20 years ago. And unfortunately this decline shows no sign of abating.
The recent British Social Attitudes survey showed that only 24% of people were satisfied with the NHS, which is an all-time low.
You might think that NHS hospitals are in a dire state, and you’d be right, but at least the number of hospital doctors has increased in proportion to the increased population and number of hospital admissions.
The situation in GP Surgeries across the country is much worse:
Over the last 10 years there have been over 1300 GP Surgery closures
There are now 2000 fewer GPs looking after 6 million more patients
The lack of investment over many years, the increasing shift of workload that used to be the responsibility of the hospital sector, the more than 7 million patients on waiting lists etc. etc. has taken its toll.
It is no wonder then that GPs around the country are saying enough is enough.
The latest government contract offer was the final straw and you may have read in the press that last week over 99% of nearly 20,000 GPs and GP registrars (including myself) voted to reject this offer.
This was not a strike ballot, but a very strong message to the government that GPs are not prepared to give up on what was once known as the Jewel in the NHS crown.
We may look back at this moment as the last chance to stop the demise of the small business, Partner-led model of General Practice that has flourished in the NHS for over 60 years. The alternative model, which is already happening around the country, is GP surgeries being run by large companies who are driven by the needs of their share-holders. You can guess what that will mean for standards of care.
As GPs we all want the same as you - to have access to your family doctor in a surgery that feels safe, close to home, with a well-resourced team ready to meet the needs of its community.
We are very fortunate to still be able to do this at Ivy Court, though it has been a struggle.
In order to provide safe care we can no longer spread ourselves too thin.
We need to give ourselves as GPs the capacity to go the extra mile for those patients who need us, the housebound, the terminally ill, the complex frail elderly patients….rather than everyone who wants us.
You may not always get a GP appointment on the day you call, but you will always be listened to by our reception team and be given options.
That may be to attend one of our local Pharmacies under the new NHS Pharmacy First scheme designed to take some pressure off the surgery.
Or to attend a GP appointment at the Ashford GP hub funded to offer extra capacity.
If we are full you may be asked for the reasons for an urgent appointment request and that your case will be reviewed by a GP and actioned appropriately.
At worst, you may be advised that our safe capacity has been reached and asked to call back when our next appointments are released, the majority of which are at 8am or 11am every working day. If you genuinely can’t call then, as most of our patients do, due to working issues or other extenuating reasons our reception staff will do their best to try and give you options.
When I hear about what is going on at GP surgeries around the country, or when you speak to friends and family from elsewhere, and when I speak to patients who have moved into the practice area, I am even more proud of what our staff are doing.
I can assure you that the Ivy Court team are always looking ahead and always planning on how we can safely and sustainably deliver the best possible care.
You may have noticed our “Thoughts for the Week” as you enter the surgery.
Last week’s one came from Theodore Roosevelt the US President and I will close with this quote as I think it is something worth remembering.
“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
It’s what we will always do at Ivy Court, and we greatly appreciate your continued support.
Till next time,
Dr Neil Pillai |
