Welcome to the Spring/Summer 2024 Surgery Newsletter -  giving you up-to-date news from the Surgery and from the NHS in general.

This winter has been especially difficult with funding for General Practice essentially frozen by the Government despite inflation and costs incurred by practices increasing year on year. We are not immune from these pressures but continue to work hard at maintaining our high standards. Thank you for your ongoing support in all that we do.

 Staff Updates

We are delighted to welcome Dr James Greenland, a salaried GP previously working in Greenwich. Dr Greenland is available at the Surgery on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays and has already had lovely feedback from patients and colleagues alike. We have also recently recruited Rachal Fitzgerald, our Paramedic Practitioner. Rachal has prior experience in 3 other GP practices and has proved an excellent addition working alongside the Duty Doctor to triage urgent, on-the-day patient concerns and in providing home visits for our housebound patients.

Dr Scott Crabtree has re-joined the practice after a 3 month rotation with the St Christopher’s palliative care team. Dr Crabtree is an excellent GP Registrar with highly impressive clinical knowledge and consultation skills. We are really pleased to have him with us until August this year.

In order to improve access on the phones and enhance the efficiency of administrative functions, we have expanded our reception and administration team,  welcoming Yuliia, Cheyenne and NiKola to the Surgery. Our 3 new lovely ladies have fitted in really well with the team and are proving highly popular with our patients. 

We are thrilled to share that the Surgery family has 3 other new arrivals, with the birth of Dr Angelina Thapar’s baby girl ,Dr Ben Vere’s baby boy ,and Dr Paul Adams’ baby girl . Congratulations to all!
It is with great sadness that we said goodbye to Debbie Eldergill from our administration team, after 17 years at Lee Road Surgery! We wish Debbie all the very best in her retirement and thank her for her years of loyalty and dedication to the practice. 

Car Park Update

Due to recent incidences of accidental damage to vehicles, we have had to make the Car Park available for STAFF ONLY parking. Patients with Blue Badges are able to park if space is available whilst attending the Surgery and will need to present these at Reception please.

Relatives or taxis pulling into the car park to drop off patients is still permitted but please do not park on the white hatched areas or obstruct the Surgery entrance or exit. 
Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.

Vaccinations

Unfortunately this winter many patients chose not to have their flu vaccination with us. We order the vaccines many months in advance (as this is what the suppliers demand) and so have to make an educated guess on how many vaccines we will need for our population. The low uptake has led to a lot of wasted vaccines this year which is a financial cost that cannot be recovered. Please consider supporting the Surgery by having your ‘flu vaccine with us next Winter so we can minimise waste of precious immunisations.

Physician Associates

Some patients have raised concerns regarding the increased use of Physicians Associates by many GP Practices and worries that they may not be sure whether they are seeing an actual qualified Doctor or a Physicians Associate. We would like to reassure all patients that we do not employ any Physicians Associates and have no plans to do so in the future.

Missed appointments

Despite the current demands on the practice and the NHS as a whole, we are unfortunately still seeing a significant number of missed appointments with patients not attending scheduled consultations. If you no longer need, or cannot attend an appointment, please let us know so someone else can make use of the time. If we have your up-to-date mobile number on file, you should receive a text 24 hours in advance whereby you can cancel with a reply. Please don’t let the appointment go to waste.

Appointment Type

One positive eventuality of the covid-19 restrictions was the advent of remote consulting, which has proved popular with some patients allowing consultation on medical issues without having to take time out of busy work, family and home schedules. All of our staff have continually worked on-site from the practice throughout the whole of the pandemic and since, adhering to health and safety restrictions. We are now proud to offer telephone, video and face-to-face consultations to suit all patient preferences. We also offer face-to-face reviews including postnatal check-ups, diabetes reviews, COPD, asthma and mental health annual appointments. We also offer enhanced contraception services including coil and implant fitting, a minor surgery clinic and joint corticosteroid injections.

Contact Details

Please ensure the contact information we have on file for you is up-to-date to enable us to keep you informed of appointments, investigations and immunisations you are due.

The surgery opening hours are 8:00am to 6:30pm Monday to Friday (excluding bank holidays) with a duty doctor available during these hours.  Should you require emergency medical treatment outside of these hours then please telephone our out of hours service: NHS 111 or go online https://111.nhs.uk