ANGRY residents have expressed frustration at waiting times to see their GP, as well as confusion over accessing repeat prescriptions and high demand on the borough’s services.
Last week hoards of local residents contacted The Wokingham Paper about their experiences with healthcare services across the borough.
Among these was local resident Linda Smith (whose name has been changed for privacy), who has independently researched Wokingham Medical Centre to try and understand what is going so wrong for patients of the surgery.
Explaining her findings, Mrs Smith said: “If you delve into Wokingham Medical Centre’s website you can find their newsletters. In these, is something called the NHS long-term plan.
“Having delved a bit deeper, this plan sees medical practices across the country move away from the system whereby GPs handle everything.
“Instead, there will be a range of healthcare professionals that can meet your needs more appropriately.
The NHS long-term plan (formerly known as the 10-year plan) was published in January this year, and sets out the key ambitions for the service over the next decade.
The plan commits to developing what it calls ‘fully integrated community-based health care’. This will see the development of multidisciplinary teams, including GPs, pharmacists, district nurses, and allied health professionals working across primary care and hospital sites, such as the Wokingham Medical Centre.
The plan to transition away from previous resource-intensive ways of operating in general practice surgeries is also financially backed. By 2023/24, funding for primary and community care will be at least £4.5 billion higher than in 2019/20 due to their share of NHS spending increasing over the timeframe.
Currently, Wokingham Medical Centre is managing this transition, however, Mrs Smith believes that there are two issues with this.
“First of all, people don’t understand what is going on,” she said. “With all of these changes occurring month on month about how to get a GP appointment, there seems to be a lack of communication to patients at the surgery about what is going on when changes occur.”
“Not only that, but they don’t seem to have enough doctors and healthcare professionals to achieve this long-term plan. As I understand it, they’re still looking to hire more GPs there.”
“In my research, I also stumbled across an organisation called Healthwatch Wokingham,” she said.
Healthwatch Wokingham describe themselves as an “independent champion for people who use health and social care services”.
Funding is provided by the government, which passes through Wokingham Borough Council who allocate at their discretion. The organisation aims to understand the needs, experiences and concerns of local residents and speak out on their behalf when it comes to matters of health and social care services.
Healthwatch Wokingham were asked about how they were helping to improve patient experiences at Wokingham Medical Centre. A spokesperson said:
“The issue of accessing GP appointments has been raised nationally with Healthwatch England and is being experienced nationwide.
“Healthwatch Wokingham Borough has been hearing concerns from patients locally, which we have raised directly with the practice. We ask that Wokingham Borough residents continue sharing their experiences with us.”
Yet it isn’t just the general practices that are causing patient concern.
“When it comes to prescriptions and particularly ongoing repeat prescriptions, there seems to be no clear system in place,” said Mrs Smith.
“I have been told that Rose Street pharmacy, which is paired with Wokingham Medical Centre, process 19,000 prescriptions per month.
“The system is creaking at the seams.”
The system for repeat prescriptions appears inconsistent, with some patients receiving six months at a time, followed up with an annual review, whilst others pay for their prescriptions monthly.
Many residents contacted The Wokingham Paper to ask why Wokingham Borough Council does not require new housing developers to include infrastructure including GP surgeries.
Cllr Wayne Smith, executive member for planning said: “GP surgeries are the responsibility of the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) not the borough council. But we do secure significant funding contributions from developers to pay for all our infrastructure and facilities requirement – about £45,000 per homes built.
“Funding from these contributions is, among other things, available to expand health facilities where a case can be made for it, as it was for Wokingham Medical Centre – which benefitted from about £150,000 that we allocated from development at Montague Park.
“Our current forecast and received infrastructure income is already committed for the foreseeable future by the Council’s medium-term financial plan and any requests for funding would need to be considered against these commitments to prioritise what can be achieved with the available funding.”
