Stortford surgeries set for longer opening hours to ease appointments crisis

Patients and carers in Bishop's Stortford are being consulted about longer opening hours at the town's GP surgeries.

East and North Herts Clinical Commissioning Group and NHS England are writing to residents.

At the moment, practices open from 8am to 6.30pm Monday to Friday, with some open longer on one or two weekdays and some Saturday mornings – known as “extended hours appointments”.

The new proposal is to offer extended hours appointments every weekday evening and at weekends/early mornings, depending on local demand, by October.

However, these appointments will be offered from a central surgery hub with a local GP, nurse or another healthcare professional, and not necessarily at the surgery where patients are registered.

The service will be run by Stort Valley Healthcare Ltd, which is a collaboration of all GPs in the area: Church Street Partnership, Parsonage Surgery, South Street Surgery and The Health Centre in Much Hadham.

Everyone registered with a GP practice in the Stort Valley and Villages area is asked to give their opinion on these proposals. Consultation will end at 5pm on Friday, April 20, and responses will be kept confidential and anonymous.

As well as demographic questions, the questionnaire asks patients how happy they would be for an appointment out of core hours with a clinician at a different GP practice in the area, how far they would be willing to travel for an early or late consultation or weekend slot and also probes the response to new technology such as an online appointment via video chat on a platform like Skype.

Beverley Flowers, chief executive of East and North Herts CCG, said: “We want to ensure that we design and develop health services that meet all of our local population’s needs, making the best use of limited resources and GP availability. To do that, we need to hear patients’ views. Please take the time to read through the proposals and complete the survey.”

The initiative addresses a key concern of patients in the town where doctors say their resources have not been improved to accommodate a rapidly increasing population.

Currently, the Carr-Hill allocation formula used by the NHS to finance care discriminates against Bishop’s Stortford as an affluent area and means that 3,500 of 20,000 patients in the town are effectively being treated with no funding.

Online ratings and reviews reflect frustration with an overloaded system: “Why can I never get an appointment when I phone at 8am on the dot? This is so wrong, I should be able to get an appointment when I phone.”

The mayor, Cllr Colin Woodward, said: “Getting an appointment at our principal surgeries, Church Street and South Street, has long been an issue for residents. This opportunity to influence developing a service that meets their needs is to be welcomed and I hope will attract wider participation than has often been the case when we are consulted on important town issues.”

Late last year, the town council summoned doctors from the Church Street and South Street practices to a meeting to explain the difficulties they face after disappointing customer satisfaction ratings and were given a frank response by “maxed out” GPs. As a result, members and medics resolved to work together to improve resources.

Complete the survey online at https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/SVVExAccess