Saxmundham Health

In August 2020 Public Health England downgraded PPE requirements for flu clinics.
This is due to the minimal contact that takes place in this setting and the advice is that single use PPE items such as gloves and aprons for each encounter is not necessary.
A face mask is advised for the whole session and use of hand sanitiser in between each patient.

At present, health authorities around the world recognise three vehicles of coronavirus transmission:
The small droplets from speaking or coughing, which can end up in the eyes, mouth or nose of people standing nearby;
Contaminated surfaces (fomites), although the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicates that this is the least likely way to catch the virus, a conclusion backed by the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (ECDC) observation that not a single case of fomite-caused Covid-19 has been observed;
Finally, there is transmission by aerosols – the inhalation of invisible infectious particles exhaled by an infected person that, once leaving the mouth, behave in a similar way to smoke. Without ventilation, aerosols remain suspended in the air and become increasingly dense as time passes.

We keep the window open and masks on during the flu clinics. We do also wear aprons and gloves but these seem to be of limited benefit.

We are sorry to learn you have got this impression and we have certainly not stopped doing annual health checks or blood tests. We continue to run a system of inviting patients with Long Term Conditions for a review every year in their birth month. If we do not get a response to the first invitation this is followed up by two further invitations - the 3rd is usually a phone call. Like all other aspects of health care there needs to be a partnership between patient and health care provider and responding to invitations and updating contact details are a couple of examples.

Some disruption to to our usual systems has been caused by the Covid 19 crisis. During the first wave of the pandemic we followed Government Guidance and continued with urgent work, high priority routine work, immunisations and cervical smears but some lower priority routine checks had to be put on hold. We are continuing to work hard to catch up with the backlog. In the interests of patient safety we are carrying out as much of the routine annual review as possible by telephone consultation but we do invite patients in to the surgery for the necessary face to face checks and blood tests. Safer ways of obtaining blood pressure readings by using the surgery BP machine or loan of our supply of home monitors has also been a response to the Pandemic.

A problem with blood tests occurred in October due to a national shortage of a reagent that was widely reported in the media. This affected surgeries throughout the whole country. This caused a further backlog which we are now working through with extra phlebotomy clinics. We have six members of staff who take blood as part of their work and they did 193 blood tests last week.

The demand for appointments has increased dramatically across the country at a time when doctors do not want to be GPs. We often get over 500 calls a day now so there are not enough hours in the day for the GPs to see everyone. Care navigation has been introduced nationally to try to direct patients to the most appropriate health care professional. This might be Physiotherapy, Mental Health Nurse, Advanced Nurse Practitioner amongst others. We accept this is a change from the old system but more appropriate, effective and direct.
I am sorry you have not found our Reception staff helpful and courteous and I will report this back.
Whilst it is true nationally that doctors tend to prefer to work in areas other than General Practice, the current Saxmundham GPs have worked at the Practice for 34,18,12, 5 and 5 years and we have a new GP who has recently joined us. We have had some locums to cover GP illness as well.