To all of our Patients on behalf of the staff at Willow Green Surgery, I wish you all a very happy and healthy 2023. I would also like to thank you for adapting to the new ways of accessing our services over the last two years. As you all know, the NHS is under intense and sustained pressure at present due to multiple factors and GP practices are struggling with the increased demand on our services.

The current wave of pressure due to Strep A infections and increasing influenza cases, has come at a particularly difficult time for General Practice. I certainly don’t want to go into the politics of why general practice is under great strain but there is an excellent cross-party report from the Health and Social Care Committee released in October2022 https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5803/cmselect/cmhealth/113/report.html summarising the current situation which I would encourage you to read.  

Just to put the current demand into context, on the Wednesday after Christmas we had 225 calls from patients requesting on- the- day help for their symptoms. Dealing with such a high volume of calls is well beyond what would be considered safe in any healthcare setting and we clearly could not offer all of these patients a face-to-face appointment.

Over the last 3 weeks we have noticed an increase in patients walking in to surgery acutely unwell. Whilst we would never refuse to attend to someone, GP practices are not the appropriate settings for managing medical emergencies such as chest pain, stroke or acute injuries. It may be concerns about long ambulance or A&E waiting times which has triggered this recent trend, but we would urge you to call 999 or attend the local A&E department if you feel that you require urgent care. 

At Willow Green Surgery, we really have tried our best to meet the rising on- the- day demand by using all available doctors to triage calls and e -consults into the surgery. We feel that by having senior clinicians responding quickly to these calls, we can efficiently formulate an appropriate plan. This may be in the form of an appointment on the day or in future with one of the clinical team, arranging investigations or providing prescriptions and advice.

Sometimes our staff may signpost you to an alternative service such as pharmacy or one of our extended access appointments for Mental Health and Gynaecology care.   Triage is the only way to manage the current level of demand but I am aware that it can be frustrating trying to access routine appointments due to the high volume of urgent on- the- day work taking the bulk of our time.

We do plan to try a hybrid appointment system from February to enable more pre-bookable appointments, and hopefully we will have a surgery extension in early 2023 and this with give us four more clinical rooms- very much needed for our now 11,000 patient list size. Unfortunately ,there is very little direct central increase in General Practice funding to pay for more Doctors and Nurses beyond the current 2% annual rise and we have to balance funding with staff wage rises, utility costs and other inflationary pressures within this funding envelope. 

Thank you for taking the time to read this lengthy message and we are always open to any ideas to help us improve our service.

Best wishes for 2023

Mark Lee – Senior Partner