EMSWORTH SURGERY AUTUMN QUACK 2021

EMSWORTH SURGERY AUTUMN QUACK 2021 

Surgery Update

At last we have moved into the newly refurbished Victoria Cottage Hospital! It has been a long road but we got there in the end!  We hope you approve of the new surroundings. Many thanks to the community for your continuing support, very many thanks to the Friends of Emsworth Community Health for the sizable donation towards kitting out the new surgery, to our PPG group for their ongoing support, especially the Chair, Jim Strudwick, who attended so many meetings on behalf of the PPG and to Kate McKenzie for her excellent work on the interior design which we hope you agree has transformed the building into an aesthetically pleasing and comfortable place to visit and to work in.

You will have noticed the artwork dotted around the building which all belongs to local artists, most of which is for sale.  If you are interested in purchasing any of the artwork please visit www.emsart.uk for further information. 10% of the proceeds will go to the Emsworth Health Trust charity which provides medical equipment. 10% of the proceeds will go to the Emsworth Health Trust charity which provides medical equipment.

Staff Update

We welcome back two GP Registrars, Dr Krishna Kalaichelvan and Dr Francesca Sandman. We have another GP Registrar who has started this month Dr Carla O’Sullivan.  We are also delighted to announce that Dr Hannah Morgan will be joining the Practice in October too.

Appointment Access

If you need to be seen, we will see you……

Over the past 18 months general practice has changed significantly. We understand that patients may feel that their care is compromised, that there is lack of access and no face-to-face appointments. Hopefully we can explain and provide reassurance.

Demands of general practice are enormous and are unprecedented.

There are several reasons for this ranging from central government funding and low staffing levels to much greater demands on the service. Emsworth Medical Practice is very proud to have been central to the rollout of the Covid Vaccination Programme headed up by Dr Rachel Jennings. We have delivered clinics, often with many of our own staff working at the clinics and this at the same time as catching up with our patients who have perhaps delayed coming to see us regarding potentially serious underlying illness. The Practice is in the lucky position of currently being fully staffed and we have additional members of the team now in the form of pharmacists, a physiotherapist, social prescribers, Health & Well Being Coaches as well as Care Coordinators who are often best placed to provide solutions to health problems.

Our telephone triage system is about helping as many people as best as possible. It is not being used as a barrier to see your GP. We have seen people face-to-face throughout the pandemic. However, we also use the phone as we have found this to be a safe and effective means of communication thereby saving a trip to the surgery and avoiding a potential exposure to Covid. We make this judgement on a case by case basis and if you need to be seen we will see you. Emsworth Medical Practice doctors are carrying out more consultations every week than ever before. We understand these changes may be frustrating, but we are making the best decisions we can under the circumstances. Fundamentally we care enormously for our patients and are doing our best for them.

Dr Chinwala on behalf of the GP Partners

Booster Dose Covid Vaccination Clinics

We are running these in our new surgery on Wednesday afternoons throughout the autumn.  You will qualify for an appointment from 6 months (180 days) after your second dose if you are aged 50 or over OR aged 16 and over AND have a health condition that puts you at high risk of Covid-19.  We will contact you when we can offer you an appointment and we are prioritising our most vulnerable groups.

Covid vaccinations can also be delivered at certain pharmacies and local mass vaccination centres. For more information on local sites go to www.nhs.UK and search for book Covid vaccination.

Message from the Pharmacy Team

At Emsworth Medical Practice we have two clinical pharmacists working with us, Kyle Ruddy and Harriet Shearing who both work two days each week.  They are available for telephone appointments and can help with all things related to medicines.  If you have a query related to your medication you can ask to be put down for a call with one of the pharmacists, or you may be directed to them by our reception staff.

 Repeat Dispensing (‘BATCH’ Prescriptions)   –  Why we do it and how it works.

Its half past 6 in the evening.  Your doctor has seen their last patient of the day and instead of going home, they now need to tackle the administrative tasks that have built up throughout the day, eg.  processing that urgent referral, interpreting blood test results, and finally, signing prescriptions.

As of September 2021, we have 13,724 patients registered at The Emsworth Medical Practice. 7,423 of these patients have a repeat prescription of some sort (and this number is increasing all the time).  Many of these patients have multiple repeat medications. As you can imagine, the time taken to sign off all of these prescriptions each day is significant and can put a burden on our already stretched GPs.

Repeat Dispensing reduces this load on our doctors.  See how below.

Sometimes abbreviated to RD, or known simply as batch prescriptions, Repeat Dispensing is where we authorise up to SIX prescriptions for each prescription item.  This means that instead of this being requested every eight weeks or so, it is requested annually.

This reduces the admin time associated with this prescription by 83%. 

For one single prescription this doesn’t amount to much time saved.  However, when we scale this across the Practice population, these marginal gains add up.  We currently have around 30% of our repeat prescription patients on RD though we would like to aspire to more.

From the patient’s point of view, when you are on a ‘batch’ prescription, you simply need to contact your pharmacy when you need more medication.  They will hold the prescription for you.  They will also advise you when you need to contact us annually, to have the batch renewed.  We will review the medications and usually consider whether blood tests, etc are needed at this time.  Some medications are not suitable for batch prescription; some painkillers for example, however most others are. If you are not on batch prescription but would like this set up, please annotate your next prescription request accordingly.

Flu Clinics

We have started inviting our ‘at risk’ patients for flu vaccinations.  If you are in any of the ‘at risk’ categories below please contact reception to make an appointment.  We have ordered in enough flu vaccine for all of our at risk patients so please do come to us for your flu vaccination so that we do not have a lot of unused vaccine left over.  We will also be offering flu invitations to the over 50’s too.

You are eligible to receive a free flu vaccination if you are in any of the following categories:

• adults 65 and over
• people with certain medical conditions  (such as diabetes, long-term heart or respiratory disease)
• pregnant women
• people living with someone who’s at high risk from coronavirus (on the NHS shielded patient list)
• receive a carer’s allowance or you are the main carer for an elderly or disabled person whose welfare maybe at risk
• children and adults with weakened immune systems
• are very overweight
• children aged 2 and 3 on 31 August 2020
• children in primary school, children in year 7 (secondary school) – to be vaccinated at school

frontline health or social care workers