Healthwatch Doncaster facilitating a public group meeting about GP practice mergers
Topic: Public meeting and discussion – Bentley Surgery and Nelson Practice merger
Date: 16 September 2020
Time: 4pm-6pm
Healthwatch Doncaster are facilitating a public meeting discussion around the merger of two GP practices – Bentley Surgery and The Nelson Practice.
This meeting and discussion will be hosted and facilitated by Healthwatch Doncaster – an independent local organisation who engage with local people and support them to have their voices heard to influence and improve health and care services in Doncaster.
We will be hosting the public meeting via Zoom:
Meeting ID: 847 915 9356
Post-meeting questions
As a result of this meeting there were questions submitted online about the merger which are noted below, with the response from the Practice:
"Why not merge with practice on same site or have I missed something? Where is the Bentley site? What is happening to the Nelson Sprotbough site? Can I transfer to the O’Connor practice so I don’t have to go to Bentley-which I think is more inconvenient. Why the change?
Response:
The Sprotbrough site of the Nelson Practice is shared with Park View Surgery. It is being developed internally to increase the number of rooms for patient care.
Dr Connor, Dr Grimwood and Dr Parker from the Nelson Practice have very good relations with Dr Deepak who is the current lead GP at Park View Surgery. They approached Dr Deepak to join the merger with Bentley Surgery but he prefers not to do that currently and instead the practices will co-operate in sharing the Sprotbrough site.
Patients of the merged practice will be able to be seen at either Sprotbrough or Bentley so you will be able to choose which you attend.
Bentley Surgery is situated on the main high street running through the village, straight after the traffic lights and opposite Tesco.
The Nelson Practice and Bentley Surgery have worked closely together for some time to share ideas for improving care and also some staffing including a joint practice manager.
We believe that joining the two practices will allow both to maintain and develop the level of care they provide and make them more sustainable for the future.
We will be able to train more of our future staff ourselves and be able to expand the range of skills and experience available to our patients.
"Would this mean that one site would be closed ? One is dark and old gloomy and inhospitable. The other is more modern bright and quite pleasant I realise that it is really important that everyone should have easy access to a surgery and continuity of care by one team of medical experts .How could this work under new proposals ? People who find mobility a problem would struggle to reach a surgery if they suddenly lost their local one. Would this mean an increased demand for home visits and would this be easy to attain"
Response:
The areas covered by Bentley Surgery and the Nelson Practice overlap. The merger of the two would mean that there is one clinical computer system for patient records which could then be accessed at any site by members of the single team. Patients could then choose which site they wished to be seen for a face to face consultation. In this way Nelson Practice patients in Bentley could be seen at the Bentley site and Bentley Surgery patients in Sprotbrough could be seen at the Sprotbrough site if they preferred. Patients in all the other areas we both cover could equally choose what suits them best.
We agree that the Scawthorpe building is not fit for purpose and instead we want to develop the sites and services at Sprotbrough and Bentley. This will mean a little further to travel for face to face appointments for patients who live just near the Scawthorpe building. We already have patients there who prefer to come to Sprotbrough and Bentley to see particular staff. We had to close services at the Scawthorpe site for several months earlier in the year due to coronavirus affecting our staffing. We continued to serve patients well by measures such as increasing telephone and video consulting and by adjusting face to face appointment times to fit with public transport timetables or when patients can get a lift to surgery. We have always provided home visits to patients who need them due to frailty or other conditions and this service will not change with the merger.
