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Measles can spread to other people easily.
Patients who have an appointment to come into the practice should not attend if they have:
Please contact the surgery and one of our clinicians will call you back.
For more information on measles, please visit the NHS website.
All patients should have received a letter and survey in April from the three Practices’ advising of our merger plans. We explained that we were seeking approval from the relevant authorities for us to merge later this year and that, in doing so, our aim is to create a sustainable Practice providing safe and effective care.
We received almost 6,000 responses to our patient survey and the results have now been collated. (More information about the survey results can be found in the ‘news’ section of the websites and on the notice boards in the waiting rooms.) Using your comments to guide us, the questions and answers below have been put together for your information.
We wish to explain that, for a period of time, the three Practices, whilst contractually being one Practice, will still operate in their current ways in most respects. We are going to be working through determining the best processes and policies as we begin to work more closely together and any changes that will affect patients will be advertised in all of the usual ways, (i.e. notices in the waiting room, patient newsletters, on the websites, facebook pages, etc).
All patients will be receiving another letter, hopefully by the end of June.
Q: Will I still be able to see/still be registered with my GP and where will they be based?
A: Routine GP appointments will be available across all three sites and we envisage that we will keep the GPs at their current sites for these routine clinics. Patients will remain registered with their current ‘usual GP’.
Q: Will the merger make it harder for me to book an appointment with my GP?
A: One of the first changes that we are making is creating a unified appointment system. Combined, we have two Paramedic Practitioners, Six Nurse Practitioners and two Triage Nurses, who, along with GP support, will be managing the on the day demand. This new way of managing our on the day demand will release GP time and enable us to provide more routine GP appointments, around 200 per week. This will be starting from 6th August. In terms of our routine GP appointment system, we will have appointments that are released 30, 7, 4 and 2 days in advance. All of these appointments, along with GP telephone consultations, will be bookable on the telephone, at the reception desk and online. We will also have ‘follow up’ appointments that are bookable by a Clinician only to ensure that, if the Clinician advises you need to be seen again in two weeks, you can be booked directly into a follow up slot and not have to call back to book. We are going to strongly encourage patients to book appointments with their usual GP in order to improve continuity of care. This will also help to even out the workload of the GPs. By increasing by 200 appointments per week, patients should begin to find it easier to be able to book an appointment with their usual GP. We are also still offering the ‘improved access’ GP clinics (weekday evening and Saturday morning appointments) and these are in addition to what we have been offering previously.
Q: Will I be made to travel to another site for my routine GP appointment?
A: As explained above, we envisage GPs will remain at their current sites for their routine clinics. We do have a number of GPs who do not have a list of patients allocated to them and therefore, if you are happy to travel to one of the other sites and your problem is not one that you should really see your usual GP for (i.e. it’s more of a one-off issue) you may be offered a sooner appointment at one of the other sites.
Q: You mentioned ‘hubs’ in your letter, i.e. diabetes, phlebotomy, respiratory, etc being from only one site in the future. Is this still happening and when?
A: We still plan on offering services in hubs across our sites in the future. At present, we are waiting on building works at the Gillies Health Centre. We won’t be able to start our hub working until the building works are complete, likely by end of 2018/early 2019. Patients will be kept up to date with our plans as they progress in all of the usual ways, (i.e. notices in the waiting room, patient newsletters, on the websites, facebook pages, etc).
Q: Will I be made to travel to another site for a Nurse appointment?
A: Nurse appointments are still going to be available as they currently are at all three sites until we begin our hubs (see above). Even when the hubs do begin, they are only for certain services, so routine Nurse care will continue to be provided at all three sites. When you call your Practice for a Nurse appointment, you will be offered the soonest appointment at your usual site. If you require an appointment sooner or would find it easier to be seen at one of the other sites for any reason, you can request to be seen at one of the other sites.
Q: Parking at Hackwood is limited, what is being done about this?
A: We have contacted the Council regarding the potential for us to purchase some parking permits for the public car park at the top of Sarum Hill for our staff to use in order to free up the staff parking spaces at Hackwood for patients. When deciding our hub locations, the limited parking at Hackwood was taken into consideration. The footfall at Hackwood is not anticipated to increase as a result of the merger.
Q: Parking at Camrose can be difficult during school drop off / pick up times, what are you doing about this?
A: We have approached the Council regarding the possibility of extending the rear car park to allow for the two periods of the day where the car park does often become full (school pick up and drop off times). We are yet to receive a response from them regarding this matter.
Q: Will you still have the same phone number/fax number?
A: It is likely that our numbers will remain the same and separate for some months yet. We will give plenty of advance warning before changing any of our telephone numbers. Please continue to call the telephone number of the Practice at which you are currently registered.
Q: Will you still have three separate websites?
A: We are planning on combining our websites as soon as possible after the merger. All three websites are very similar so you should be able to easily navigate around our new combined website when it is up and running. We are looking into the possibility of a redirection to the new website being put on our current websites.
Q: Will I still be able to drop my prescription/sample/letter/other item off to my usual Practice?
A: Yes, certainly for the first few months following the merger, if something that you have handed in needs to make its way to one of our other sites, we will arrange for its secure transfer. When we have combined all of our back-office functions, we may then ask patients to drop off/collect different things from different sites depending on where the various administrative teams (reception/secretaries/data entry/prescriptions) are based, but that won’t be for a while and we will give you plenty of notice.
Q: Will you still offer the same services?
A: Yes, all services are continuing and our reception team will be able to confirm which site you should attend when you book an appointment.
Q: I currently have an annual review for my condition, will this continue?
A: Yes, you will still have an annual review for your condition. We are currently working on combining our processes for the sending of letters and ensuring that we are all offering the same, good quality, clinical care at these review appointments. There may be a delay in your receiving your invitation this year due to this important process taking place.
Q: Will the new merged Practice have access to my medical records?
A: Yes, the three clinical databases are being combined into one database so whichever of our three sites you are seen in, your medical record will be available to the Clinician seeing you.
Q: I currently use the online appointment booking/medication ordering system, will this still work?
A: For those patients currently registered at Gillies and Overbridge, your log in details will remain the same and continue to work throughout. For those patients of Camrose and Hackwood, unfortunately, your patient number will change as a result of the database merge. Therefore, you will need to re-register for patient access after the database merge. For Hackwood, after 9th July and for Camrose, after 23rd July. We will be holding evening drop in sessions for patients to collect their new log in details. More information will be provided in the letter being sent to all registered patients by the end of June. Please note that you will required to bring ID and will only be able to collect log in details for yourself.
Q: I opted out of sharing my medical data with other NHS services, will I need to opt out again after the merger?
A: No, this information is already on your computer medical record so therefore this will remain on there after the practices merge.
Q: Why do you need to merge? Can’t things just stay the same as before?
A: We have to merge as it is becoming increasingly difficult to provide quality and efficient patient care in smaller practices and the merger will make the three practices stronger and bring opportunities to offer extended services for our patients. We stand by our comment that, if we do not merge, at least one of the three Practices would cease to exist within the next 5 years.
Q: Is there another option?
A: Other options have been looked at but this is the most viable one.
Q: Do you have to seek approval to merge?
A: Yes, we have had approval to merge from NHS England and NHS North Hampshire Clinical Commissioning Group.
Q: What catchment area will the merged Practice cover?
A: The merged Practice boundary will be a boundary that is made up of the three existing ones.
Q: What will happen to the staff?
A: We are currently looking at staffing structures and how we will combine teams across the sites.
Q: Will the merged Practice have a new name?
A: Yes, the merged Practice will be called ‘Acorn Health Partnership’ and the three buildings will be referred to by their name rather than the old Practices names, i.e. Camrose Medical Partnership will be the ‘St Andrews Centre’ site, The Hackwood Partnership will be the ‘Essex House’ site and Gillies and Overbridge Medical Partnership will be the ‘Gillies Health Centre’ site or ‘GHC’ for short.
Q: Will there be a patient participation group (PPG) for the merged Practice?
A: Yes, we will ask all of our current PPG members if they would like to be a part of the merged PPG and will of course be open for new members. New members should contact their current Practice to ask for further details about how to join.
Q: Will any of the building be closed down?
A: No, we are keeping all three buildings and extending the Gillies Health Centre by way of converting some administrative space into Clinical rooms.
Q: Where is the Overbridge Surgery?
A: In our letter, and throughout all of our correspondence, we mention the ‘Gillies and Overbridge Medical Partnership’. Gillies used to have a branch site some years ago called the Overbridge Surgery. Despite this being closed some years ago, the Partnership name was not changed. Sorry for any confusion caused, we were very limited on the length of the letter and were given strict guidelines as to what the letter had to contain and this took up our wordcount.
Q: Why did you advise patients that they can register elsewhere?
A: Providing information as to patient choice to register elsewhere is one of the compulsory pieces of information that we had to include within our letter (PCSE send the letters on our behalf and they dictate some specific points that we must include). We apologise to those who felt that we were suggesting that if they don’t like our proposal, we’d like them to register elsewhere; this is not the case, we just have to make all patients aware of their choices.