How we are working

Throughout the pandemic we have strived to continue to deliver care for our patients whilst making sure it safe for all our patients and staff. We will continue to do so going forward.

In the Last 6 months we have delivered 21,106 appointments (by GPs, ACPs etc), 10,619 of which were with GPs (this doesn’t include any impromptu appointments or impromptu telephone appointments made). Of these at least over 3,600 were face to face (of which at least 2,200 were by GPs). In addition to this we have delivered many Health Care Assistant appointments for blood tests, other checks and reviews.  All these numbers DO NOT include Practice Nurse appointments – those are above and beyond the numbers quoted. In fact, the system shows nearly 9,000 nurse/healthcare appointments to. That’s around 30,000 appointments in 6 months.

The Vaccine programme was delivered by a federation during this time, some of our staff helped, one GP volunteered at vaccine centres on their days off to help give them support, we did some of the most vulnerable housebound patients because the federation was not able to.  We have supported the programme through our federation, even though we ourselves have not run it.

We have more staff than we’ve ever had. We have more clinical workers, and more GPs coming soon. We’ve had to pay to get additional rooms by way of Portakabin to accommodate an expanding number of clinical workers.

So, we will continue to do the best we can, and invest what we can in delivering care for our patients and continue our operational plan that involves increasing direct face to face appointments as we move forward, and of course less if the infections rates climb.

From the 19th of July nothing will change at the surgery – patients will still need to wear a mask, socially distance and use hand sanitiser in the surgery. The Staff will still wear PPE. We are required (by law) to protect our staff and visitors to the practice, and so we are sure that whilst it may be frustrating our patients will do their part in protecting others that may be at the practice in the waiting areas such as elderly, sick and vulnerable patients.  Remember, being vaccinated does not stop you catching or transmitting the virus – it reduces the chances of serious illness and death.

As you are all aware, we never shut. In fact, we’ve been picking up work from closed outpatient departments, community services sending work to us, doing more work than ever. Yes, the model has been different – remote consultation/appointments more than face to face in order to protect patients and staff, but we have been working harder than ever. The remote consultation model is not new at Brewood – we’ve done telephone and video consultations for 8 years – those that have saved travelling in, perhaps having an appointment whilst still at work for example always found them useful in the past and we believe that the model will continue to serve our patients well into the future. Patients will always be called in where an examination is needed.

The PPG has started up again and soon will have their website up and running where news and communications will help our patients understand what is going on.

Thank you for reading and let’s hope things continue to improve.