As I understand it, from reading the Herald, doctor’s surgeries in Abingdon and surrounds have started opening at the weekend from this weekend. The Malthouse Surgery was open this morning …
as was the Abingdon Surgery for pre-booked appointments. I was also told that the Malthouse will be open tomorrow – Sunday. Surgeries will be working together, so you book through your own surgery but may get an appointment elsewhere depending on the rotation of who is open. It will also allow evening appointments to 8 pm.
The Malthouse will be taking on new GPs to cater with their extended hours, so I am not sure there will be room on the board for all 14 of them.
Both Dr Crossley, and Dr Buttar are now gone from the top of the board at the Abingdon Surgery, as younger doctors start heading up the practice.
There is also the minor injuries at the Community Hospital who are open to 10:30 pm. All this will hopefully reduce the burden on A&E at the JR.
Utter nonsense, last week I wanted an appointment to see my GP at one of these surgeries and the earliest I could get to see him was the 26th of February! How is spreading his time even more thinly going to get me to see him any quicker? We need more GP’s and the ones we have need to work proper hours !
Wait until the extra 900 houses are built. There is no new G P surgery being planned to accommodate the extra population It is obvious that this will mean longer waiting lists at existing G P surgeries in Abingdon. The 900 houses are the first tranche to be built. A recent study said that the number of empty houses in the UK has risen dramatically and there is no need to build extra housing in green belts. When The Morland Gardens estate was being planned I found that there were over 200 houses for sale in Abingdon of all difference prices. There was no need to build extra housing as if anyone wanted to move to Abingdon there were sufficient houses for sale to accommodate them.
Janet – your logic only holds if all those 200 for sale houses are either unoccupied or plan to move out of the area. I suspect that is not the case as the vast majority of house moves are local.
I bet most GPs do more than 40 hours per week; I suspect most do more than 60. One-to-one with patients, that is pretty demanding, I would have thought.
More doctors yes. It takes 5 years to get to qualification, then about a further 18 months practice before you can get into general practice.
The lead-time is therefore about six and half years.
As ever we get a biased and incomplete story from Janet and her regurgitation of tabloid headlines. Yes, there are more empty houses than ever but there are also more households than ever. In fact the % of empty houses has remained at just under 4% for some considerable time. Further, this figure of ’empty’ includes second and holiday homes ( yes we could have a conversation about the morality of that), homes being renovated and rental homes between tendencies. So yes, there are currently at any moment in time more than a million ’empty’ homes in the UK but it’s not always the same homes from day to day and many of them are not in any way available as long term solutions to the lack of housing. Homelessness is a scandal and a blight on modern society but like everything else other than furthering bigoted political agendas it is not helped by the misinterpretation of facts.
Going back to the point about surgeries – the developers of the 900-home estate are providing a building which can be used for any community purpose(s) – surgery, social centre, shop etc so what we should be doing is lobbying the authorities (District Council, NHS etc) to make sure the right things go in there. (Of course, if we had a Neighbourhood Plan that would all have been sorted!). The developers cannot determine who takes up the premises they provide.
Captainkaos2 is missing the point of the new arrangements. It was never intended that you get to see your OWN GP any quicker, but rather you would get to see A GP from one of the practices at a weekend or later in the evening. Much better for people, like myself, who otherwise would have to take time off work. Remains to be seen how well it will work, or even how long you will have to wait for one of these appointments once they catch on.
Reducto. One would expect the BBC to have a sound grasp on facts. I have been told from a reliable source that the City of Oxford is looking to Abingdon to fulfill its housing needs and many more houses are scheduled to be built around Abingdon. People want to make sure that factors like the effect on traffic and local resources are not ignored.
Janet, on this occasion it is the interpretation and presentation of the facts that I take issue with not the facts themselves, which is why I stated that I agreed that there are indeed a growing number of houses classified as ’empty’. However, simply stating that fact without the definition of ’empty’ used in the research or its relationship to the overall number of households gives an inaccurate view. That’s why it’s dangerous and misleading to only speak in headlines.
Janet – there are several groups around Abingdon taking a deep and close interest in all of these planning proposals, reading the lengthy documents, attending consultation meetings, planning enquiries etc and making informed and considered submissions to those.
It is public knowledge that the City are looking to all the surrounding Districts to help them meet their housing needs (no need to rely on tip-offs from “reliable sources” and those Districts have a statutory “duty to co-operate” in resolving the issues. What is needed is not just “not in my back yard” reactions, but constructive ideas for how to resolve very real problems. I am sure those groups would welcome your input.
By the way, regardless of how many 3-4 bed properties may or may not be available, anyone who knows any young people looking for an affordable home knows that these are NOT readily available around here – and just focusing on properties for sale ignores the fact that many of them can’t afford to buy – we need affordable rented properties as well. Our energies should be going on getting the right homes built – not just opposing all building because we are alright and don’t want property values to go down!
Triage in all GP surgeries would help. This is what happens in the walk in clinics of larger cities.
Quite a lot of things people go to A&E for can be self-treated or treated with an over counter mediation from a pharmacy and they could be given this advice in a local GP surgery without taking up 10 minutes of a GP’s time.
People live further away from extended family who have more knowledge about how to treat simple conditions. Maybe “Call a Nana for triage before dialling 999” could be an idea with legs!