East Lynne Medical Centre newsletter n

East Lynne Medical Centre
NEWSLETTER No. 6

Welcome to our latest newsletter, for those of you who have not seen one before, we try to create one approximately every 4months.

As I am sure you are all aware, we are going through a very difficult time at the moment with Dr Macmillan leaving us in September, after 28 years, we replaced him, but unfortunately his replacement was not suitable and left us very quickly.
Dr Faerestrand retired in April – we were all so very sad to lose him, he was our Senior partner for over 28 years and we will all miss him so much.
As you can imagine, losing these 2 long serving partners has left us extremely short of available appointments and for this we sincerely apologise. We are employing locums to temporarily bridge the gap while we try our utmost to find a suitable replacement. We ask if you could please be patient with us and trust that we are doing our best to recruit a new partner as soon as possible and to get the practice back to full speed. You can all be assured that no patients’ health or safety will ever be compromised whilst we are in this position.
Please remember that you can have an appointment with Bridget (our Nurse practitioner), Mr Patel (our Independent prescriber) or Louise (our Independent Supplementary Prescriber).
ooo0ooo




Last seasons’ flu campaign went very well, as usual, we held 4 Saturday morning surgeries specifically for Flu vaccinations as well as clinics within the normal surgery time, and all patients requesting the jab were accommodated and all quotas were met, with over 2,500 jabs given.

We have recently formed a Patient Participation Group which consists of several patients of the practice. We will soon be compiling a survey with them for you all to submit, giving your feelings on our practice. They will consider any constructive ideas that they feel would be helpful, once agreed, these ideas will be implemented.

Mr Patel (our Independent prescriber) has been awarded an M.B.E. for his services in the community and he received this at Buckingham Palace, earlier this year, we all send our congratulations to him on this wonderful award.

Our website has had a ‘face-lift’ so I hope you all approve of the new look. In the last 12 months there have been over 150,000 visits to the side so obviously this continues to be very popular and many, many patients use it to request their repeat medication and also to make or cancel non-urgent appointments. If you have never looked at it, the address is www.eastlynnemedicalcentre.co.uk so do have a browse.
As always, the telephones in the Practice are constantly busy. I would like to take this opportunity to try to give you details of how our system works.

We have 6 lines coming in to the practice and every weekday from 8am to 9am with 3 members of staff answering.

At 9am the system diverts to the menu options – Appointments, prescriptions, messages/results and the switchboard for any other calls. Each of these options has a dedicated member of staff who deals with the respective calls all day long. We understand that some of you have experienced considerable waiting times for these options and for this we sincerely apologise, however, our staff are doing their very best to accommodate you all at these very trying times, so perhaps some of these suggestions will help:-

If you are calling to make an appointment and are calling between 8-9am there will be a wait but please persevere, the receptionists do one call followed by one person in the queue, to try and make it fair.

If you are calling to leave a message for a Doctor, the message desk will answer as soon as they can but this option is best called after 9am and after 3pm when it is slightly quieter (obviously if you have an urgent message or are requesting a home visit then you should call as early as you can).

If you are calling regarding a prescription, this option seems to be constantly busy but, be assured your call will be answered as quickly as possible, but again we suggest you try to call later in the morning and afternoon when it seems to quieten slightly.