Dear patients of Stoke Road Surgery,
Following the recent media coverage of patient dissatisfaction with the NHS, we felt it was important to let you know what we feel about the problem, as we are equally upset and dissatisfied with the current level of service provision. We would like to ask you for your help and support. Thank you for taking the time to read the rest of this letter.
Over the last few years, this surgery, like many others, has been under increased financial pressure. Like all households we have had increases in all our costs – everything we buy costs more, our energy costs have spiralled, and our staffing costs have also increased significantly. Over the last 5 years, the funding we receive from the government has increased by 1% each year and the forecast is that this will go up by 1.9% for the next financial year. This increase does not come close to covering our current costs.
You may have read about “new” money that has come into primary care networks. Some of this money pays for staff who are making a significant difference to patient care. However, this funding does not help Stoke Road Surgery to pay its own staff. This means we can not afford to replace all staff who leave, and we may not be able to continue to offer all the services we do currently. We can only afford to offer the levels of service we are actually funded for.
All our staff are working extremely hard to provide the best level of care they can for all our patients. We can not work any harder.
Despite offering more appointments than ever before, we are finding it very difficult to keep up with demand. This may be because:
- The population is getting older, which brings with it more illnesses.
- The increased hospital waiting lists mean people who are waiting for specialist appointments are coming back to us repeatedly in the meantime.
- There has been an increase in demand for certain treatments such as HRT, and specialist referrals such as mental health and ADHD.
Stoke Road Surgery has a team of fantastic people that we are all very proud to be part of. It is the team that makes the surgery such a great place to work and why our patients receive good care. We are also very well supported by our patients and our Patient Participation Group (PPG) – which we value hugely.
General practice is not always the right place to seek help for your problem. We are lucky that other services (such as eye specialists, podiatry, physiotherapy and more) offer an excellent service which you may be directed to. In addition, the local pharmacies in Cleeve can assess and treat a number of minor conditions.
You can help us by trying to self-manage minor illnesses, by using other services when they are offered and by attending any health checks you are invited to.
On one positive note, we have recently been successful in securing NHS funding to replace our out of date phone system and our new, modern system has now been installed. We are hopeful that this will make contacting us by phone much less stressful and frustrating for everyone and we are monitoring this daily to make sure we are getting the most out of this new system.
We intend to keep fighting for general practice and primary care as these are the bedrock of the NHS. Primary care provides 90% of appointments in the NHS for less than 9% of the funding. This is simply not sustainable.
Our Local Medical Committee (LMC) has met with some of our local MPs to try to explain to them the financial pressures general practice is having to deal with. Any support you can add, by contacting your own MP, may just make a difference. We have a template letter (attached) which you may want to send.
Thank you for your understanding. We do care, and we are doing our utmost to provide the best care we can.
The GP partners of Stoke Road Surgery.
April 2024