Please read this is the letter Abby Down sent to the medical centre as part of the Fields Not Houses focus group. 20th October 2014 Dear Mr Burnham I am contacting you with regard to the current state of affairs at my local Surgery - Abbey View Medical Centre - in my home town of Shaftesbury, and its future plans in supporting our growing population. I have lived in North Dorset my entire life and feel we have never suffered so badly with our health care system as we have in recent times. The risk to safe patient care is worrying, for my family and I, friends and fellow Shaftesbury people, old & young. Not only from the day to day inability to get an appointment with my GP of choice but the fact that I cannot get through on the telephone to make an appointment same day, even if I call at 8.30am and wait on hold for half an hour; if I do get an appointment it is never with my own GP; nor can I park at the surgery when I get there. Then, my baby’s appointment with a Nurse Practitioner (back in the Summer) resulted in a one hour delay to our allotted time, plus the NP had to speak to the Doctor for assistance anyway! I understand from a tiny advert that I happened to see in the BVM a while back that you are planning a merger between the Shaftesbury & Fontmell Surgeries; Sturminster Newton and Marnhull Surgeries. There has not been much more publicity on the matter so I have had to carry out research of my own to try to find out what exactly is going on. I note from your Patient Leaflet (why has this not been distributed to every household in Shaftesbury & outlying villages affected?) that our bursting to capacity Surgery is now reduced to only 9 Doctors (due to Dr Myles September retirement. The most horrifying part was to discover that he alone had 2060 patients allocated to him!). I looked into the PPG (Patient Participation Group of approx 450 members) Report 03 2014 where it clearly states that Abbey View Medical Centre has a population of 15,102 patients. This equates to 1678 patients per Doctor - right now. But what thought has been given to the 1104 new houses that our delightful government has dictated MUST be built in North Dorset by 2026? That area encompasses Shaftesbury, Melbury Abbas & Cann - I believe this is within catchment area for Abbey View & new patients? I do not feel that Abbey View is accommodating its existing patients, let alone an influx of a further potential 4000+. I’ve crunched the numbers & I still can’t quite see the initial benefit, especially to patients at Sturminster & Marnhull where they have only 6 Doctors and the website clearly states that the Sturminster Newton Medical centre has about 9000 patients: that equates to about 1500 per Doctor. The proposed merger is asking the Sturminster & Marnhull Doctors to take an additional 106 patients on top of their existing list. Isn’t that creating the same problem that we already have here at Abbey View? Worryingly I note from the PPG (Sturminster Group) that “At a Recent British Medical Association conference it was announced that the number of GP’s as a proportion of all Doctors in England has fallen in the last 20 years. The number of patient consultations has soared to an all-time high while funding for general practise has dropped to an historic low.” I believe that NHS funding to GP’s is just 8.39% of their entire budget & Shaftesbury Town Councillor Philip Proctor advises that Dorset has no more funding for any additional costs or patients. But you know all this, which I assume is behind some of the merger reasons? So finally I’m asking, please could you clarify the statistics on a day-to day level - how many patients per GP are you allowing for with the merger by April 2015 & have those plans made provisions for the increase in patients due to imminent building, of a potential 4000+? I would be really interested to hear your own thoughts and also your official position, by return email if possible, please. Yours Sincerely Mrs Abby Down
Posted on: Wed, 22 Oct 2014 09:46:03 +0000
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