Bid to improve GPs' service
TALKS about surgery services in the Bishop’s Stortford area were just what the doctor ordered.
The ‘conversation café’ at Rhodes in Stortford last Wednesday was hosted by NHS Herts and aimed to give local people a chance to talk directly to GPs, receptionists and practice staff.
As a result, doctors from all five surgeries in Stortford, Sawbridgeworth and Much Hadham met with about 70 patients, councillors and community representatives to share ideas about improving local surgeries.
Discussions focused on how making an appointment with a GP or nurse can be made easier, whether surgeries could open for longer, better communication about what services they offer and the need to make it clear to patients what they can do to help, including making sure they keep appointments and being flexible about which doctor or nurse they see.
GPs talked about the range of services the NHS provides, how money is spent and the challenges facing them in their new role as commissioners, including an ageing population, advances in new treatments and medicines, and smaller increases in health budgets than in previous years.
Dr Peter Keller, a Sawbridgeworth GP, said: “The event was a really positive step towards improving access to GP services for people in the area. It was especially good for patients and practice staff to have conversations about how, by working together, some of the current issues might be resolved.”
His colleague, Dr Deborah Kearns, said: “Going forward, we want to set up a group of local patients to work alongside the new Clinical Commissioning Group, who will be consulted about future plans for health services.”
All the views will now be collated into a report.
In June last year, two surgeries in Stortford – the Church Street Partnership and the South Street Surgery – were named in the bottom three of the 132 surgeries in Hertfordshire when it comes to patients’ access to doctors. The National GP Patient Survey of 8,237 practices showed that both surgeries ranked in the bottom 60 nationally.
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