Call for action as doctors admit they are ‘fully stretched’

DOCTORS’ surgeries in Melksham have admitted they are ‘fully stretched’ and struggling to recruit more staff, and local campaigners say councils and the NHS need to work harder to make sure more facilities are built in the town.

Members of the NHS, local surgeries and dentists, councillors and the public sat down recently to discuss the future of health care in Melksham.

The meeting was organised by volunteers writing Melksham’s neighbourhood plan, who said afterwards that the councils and the NHS need to work better together to tackle the problem.

The meeting comes at a time when there are serious concerns about the number of doctors working in Melksham, and the town’s biggest doctors’ surgery – Giffords Surgery – no longer offers advance appointment booking for its approximately 14,000 patients.

Fully stretched

Nick Westbrook, who is  the neighbourhood plan’s lead on health and wellbeing said, “Local GPs confirmed that they are fully stretched to meet the needs of local patients and are having trouble recruiting doctors to fill vacancies.

“The meeting was told about work that is in hand across Wiltshire to develop new ways of working to provide support and treatment to patients through community teams to meet these demands.

“Ability to recruit doctors, clinical staff and indeed dentists is a big issue locally.

Severe National Funding pressures

“The Wiltshire commissioners and providers of NHS services indicated that planning for the future is extremely difficult at present in light of severe national funding and workforce pressures that they face.

“It was agreed that the recent population growth in the Melksham area is adding to pressures on already stretched services, and this must be taken into account when considering future applications for new housing development applications.

“The neighbourhood plan team suggests that better partnership working is needed between local councils, the NHS and developers, to ensure there are discussions about where to put health and community facilities and about funding them.

“It was an extremely useful meeting in helping to better understand the issues around healthcare services in Melksham now and for the future.”

Concerns were raised last month in Melksham News about the number of doctors available in the town. Research by the neighbourhood plan group said the town should have the equivalent of one full-time doctor for every 1,724 patients, but actually has more like one per 2,043.

Giffords Surgery, on Spa Road, has almost half the town’s patients on its books and no longer offers pre-booked appointments. Patients must call on the day they wish to be seen and will be triaged over the phone.

Savings

A statement on the surgery’s website says, “This will avoid patients having to wait long periods of time to see their GP, or booking appointments just in case they need them. It will eradicate the problem with patients who fail to attend, which will create a huge saving of appointments.

“We have only been running this system for a few weeks but so far those patients that have used the system have been very satisfied with the outcome. Patients are getting their problems resolved much more quickly than we were able to do under the old appointment system.”