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Pontesbury & Worthen Medical Practice

FAQs

• Will you remain a NHS practice, offering a broad range of ‘private’ treatment; or is this the beginnings of a ‘private medical care’ practice?

Yes we will absolutely be remaining as an NHS practice, there is no intention of becoming a private medical practice.

• Will a satisfactory level of autonomy be maintained, both for the administration and for the medical aspects of a GP practice when you combine the clinical and administrative teams?

The structure is being looked at so everyone has appropriate line management, but as in any practice a degree of autonomy is required to carry out day to day duties.

• Will there be resultant job losses when the amalgamation is finalised?

There are no redundancies planned.

• Will best practice be implemented across both sites?

We will be looking at all our processes at both sites with the plan to take the best from each practice going forwards.  We have already started to identify areas where each practice has strengths and how we implement them across both sites. By merging, the expectation is that services will be strengthened for patients.  Patients will still be able to access the health care they need at either site and should have a greater degree of flexibility of when or where they are seen and a greater choice of clinicians.

• Will telephone triage be undertaken and applied when booking appointments? 

With the Covid-19 pandemic we have had to adapt to a very different way of working in order to keep patients safe and this has meant a big change to how we run our appointments system.  This has been accepted by patients and we have found that telephone triage is working well. 

• Will we be able to a doctor of our choice e.g. the one we are used to seeing?

As the practices are merging all doctors will be working for the new “Pontesbury and Worthen Medical Practice”, but you are perfectly entitled to be seen by whichever doctor you choose, subject to availability and your clinical need at the time, and you will have greater choice of appointment and location being able to be seen at either site.

• For those with transport issues, will it be possible to see a Pontesbury G.P at the Worthen Medical Centre? What sort of service is envisioned for the Worthen practice?

Both sites will run as part of the merged practice, and GPs will run surgeries at both sites, though obviously Worthen can only house one GP surgery at a time, patients will be able to attend  either site. There will however be occasions where demand is high, and choice at either site may be limited. As such we would, on occasion, be likely to have urgent assessments being done on one site.

Home visiting is only available for patients who are bedbound, or housebound for medical reasons. Generally patients who can attend hospital outpatients would also be expected to have arrangements in place to allow them to attend the surgery.