Adur Health Partnership
Newsletter

Produced in co-operation with our Patient Engagment Group

Happy New Year to you all! May 2024 bring you happiness, joy and may you be healthy and well!

Welcome to issue 6 of the Adur Health Partnership and the Patient Engagement Group’s Newsletter. The look is a little different, but it is still the same Newsletter. With every new quarter we will be changing the Newsletter colour, so it will be easier to distinguish between the issues. We are also thrilled to introduce a new regular feature to this Newsletter, which is called Patient’s Story. We would like to invite you to contribute to this. Your story can be about any experience you have had with the practice – good or bad. We will choose a story which will be powerful to share and will help other people, should they find themselves in a similar situation. We will, of course, anonymise your story before sharing it in the Newsletter. If you would like to send us a story for the Newsletter, please email it to sxicb-wsx.ahp@nhs.net and put ‘Newsletter patient’s story’ in the subject. You can also send us a letter, or drop your story in to any of our Receptions. Please mark your stories for the attention of Petra Butler, Patient Experience Manager.

Patient's Story - The Bite!
One day I discovered I had been bitten on the back of my knee by an unidentified beastie.

Day 2 – 5, I applied tea tree oil with no effect so changed to antihistamine cream.
Day 6, Bite had turned in to a mini volcano – very red and angry looking.
Day 7, Took a photo of said bite and showed it to our wonderful neighbourhood pharmacist. He suspected an infection and sent me quick smart to the surgery.

I went to Shoreham Health Centre to see if I could book an appointment with a GP, just as the pharmacist had advised. The receptionist suggested that I fill out a paper triage form that I completed there and then and I mentioned that I had a photo of the said bite. She said I might need to wait a while before the GP could assess my situation. I waited no more than 10 minutes before the GP called me to look at the photo and diagnose the problem. He issued a prescription immediately to be collected from the original pharmacy. All done and dusted within one hour – that is the NHS at its best!

Day 10, Treatment is working, pleased to say.

Patient Engagment Group

The Patient Engagement Group (PEG) is an informal group of patients across the four Adur Health Partnership surgeries. We meet, together with health colleagues, every month at the Shoreham Centre in Pond Road. We celebrate things that go well and we work together to make your views count in the running of the surgeries. We make sure that you are informed, consulted and listened to. Everyone is welcome at our meetings. For further details please email us at sxicb-ws.ahp.peg@nhs.net or visit the AHP website for more information and the dates of our meetings.

Collaborative Practice
If you think you can benefit from a gentle walk every week, meeting up with people for a cup of tea, or knitting/crocheting little toys for our children’s vaccination clinics or a chat about books etc, please join our sessions. You are cordially invited to join for whatever reason – whether you feel a little lonely, isolated or simply love crafting or walking or even just because… please come along. For more information about the activities, please visit our website or our social media at Adur Health Partnership – GP Practice on Facebook and Instagram.

GP Led Triage
GP led triage has been successfully rolled out to Northbourne Medical Centre and Manor Practice, which means that the three main surgeries have the same system of booking our patients for GP appointments. When you reach your surgery (both in person and over the telephone), you will be asked a series of questions by our Reception team, who will enter your responses into a form on your clinical records. A GP at Reception will triage the form and will advise on what type of appointment needs to be booked for you, or whether there may be another service which would be more appropriate for you like Pharmacies, Urgent Treatment Centres or A&E. The best way to book a GP appointment is by telephone. You can now call us anytime during your surgery opening hours. No need to ring us at 8 am anymore. Actually, you can beat the telephone queues by calling us later in the day. There are dedicated lines for Nurse appointments and general enquiries. Callers wishing to speak to a member of the Reception team with regard to these, do not need to wait in a telephone queue for a GP appointment. Our telephone lines are open Monday to Friday 8.00am to 6.30pm. Please note that between 12.45am and 2.00pm the lines are open for emergencies, and urgent calls only.

Updates From Further Afield
Waiting times in hospital A&E departments are always hitting the headlines. There are 6 "local" hospitals (University Hospitals Sussex) with Emergency Departments. The NHS wants 76% of all A&E attendances to be seen within 4 hours. The average across the 6 local hospitals is about 64%. Whilst this is short of the National target, the local hospitals are improving month on month and are in the top, achieving 35% of similar Trusts in the Region, and within the top 36% nationally. Our most local hospital, Worthing A&E, has around 200 attendances per day, which averages 8 per hour; but of course not evenly spread across 24 hours. Heavy investment will shortly be made to expand the A&E across all local sites, and with an extension of the MIU (Minor Injury Unit) at Worthing. For the last 2 months waiting times for elective surgery have reduced across the local hospitals. For the last 3 months no patient has been waiting more than 104 weeks and the number of 65 (National standard) and 52 week appointments wait is continually falling. The new Community Diagnostic Centre at Southlands has been very busy since the recent opening. Rather than being in an acute hospital environment where emergencies can cause delays, having fixed appointment times for CT, MRI and X-Ray is being very well received. This year there will be no extra funding from the Government to ease capacity over the winter. At the same time hospitals are expected to achieve 103% of 2019 activity (ie - pre Covid). Heavy investment has been made locally to increase the bed base and employ more nurses.

Call Back
Did you know that if there are five or more people in a telephone queue a call back option is activated and you will be presented with an option to either hold on the line or request a call back. By requesting a call back you will maintain your position in the queue, as your call will already be logged in the call system. Please keep your phone on you as our telephone system can only call back once. If you miss the call back, please call us back. Please listen to the telephone prompts carefully as the options have recently changed. Please be aware that AHP surgeries close at 6.30pm, and the telephone lines also close at this time. If you are waiting in a queue between 6.00pm and 6.30pm, or are using the call back option at this time, your call may not be answered on that day. Please call us again on the next working day. If your call cannot wait until then, please call 111 for the NHS 111 service, or 999 if your call is about a life threatening condition. We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.

Published: Jan 17, 2024