A panel of NHS and council officials and representatives from the White Horse Medical Practice were quizzed by local people at a public meeting earlier this month about the future of Westbury’s health services.
Local residents had the chance to respond to a report by Healthwatch Wiltshire into Westbury’s health care services and ask questions directly to those who buy and provide health and care services about what is being done to ensure Westbury is receiving the right level of care.
Calls for action have been ongoing for over a year, with many people feeling that their concerns are continously ignored.
Over 60 people attended the meeting which took place at The Laverton, to hear the findings of the report which confirmed ‘widespread concern’ over the strain that local GPs are under and the increasing demand for appointments at the White Horse Health Centre.
As well as answering questions from the public, it was an opportunity for the health centre to reassure people that improvements were being made and significant changes are already making a difference.
Dr Beale, GP at the health centre said, “We are not the only practice that has difficulties achieving all the targets because of the lack of people who want to be GPs and practice nurses. But we do listen and try our best to attract people and change our system so we can accommodate as many people as possible. But at the end of the day, we’re only human and we can only do as much as we can do. We are aware of the issues, so we have to plan and do our best.”
The White Horse Health Centre practice manager, Mark Dickson said, “We have advertised where-ever we can, for as long as we can afford to. The national crisis isn’t new to any of us. We’ve offered relocation grants, enhanced pay – we’ve done everything that we can. Our new recruitment status should bring a big change, but it’s going to take a little bit of time to get trained GPs into the system.
“We have also changed the appointment system. Before you could only book a routine appointments in advance, but we’re making many more appointments available at much shorter term. It has had a massive effect on capacity.
“We’ve had many more positive comments in the last six weeks than we have negative, especially about capacity and continuity. Most of our complaints before that were about length of time it took to see GPs and we didn’t disagree. We are trying to improve and addresss the problems and make it the best can.”
To read the full report go to www.healthwatchwiltshire.co.uk and search for ‘Westbury report’.
