Kings Medical Practice News www.kingmedicalpractice.co.uk

The practice is an approved GP Training practice and we have doctors undertaking specialist GP training with us for six or twelve months and sometimes longer. This week two of our doctors have successfully completed their training and going to 'fly the nest'. Dr Aditya Narkar have been with us for 18 months. He is currently on holiday in China - we keep getting regular updates about his progress and experience - and when he returns he is going to do some locuming and shifts for NHS Direct. We have got to know Aditya very well and we wish him all the best in his future career. The other doctor leaving us is Major Doctor Tom Clack. Tom is in the Army and joined us in March last year to complete his GP training and get signed off with all the exams our trainees have to do to get certified to work as a GP. Tom is going back to Colchester to join the parachute regiment. He is likely to be deployed to Afghanistan in the next 18 months - so we not only wish Tom all the best but we als

Last week the government announced sweeping reforms to the NHS which will place GPs in the driving seat of commissioning care for our patients. Commissioning is the process whereby the NHS agrees with hospitals what services they are going to provide and how much they are going to pay for them. Currently this is all done by Primary Care Trusts with very little involvement of the GPs . With the new reforms all GPs will be in consortium that will undertake this commissioning role. We are part of the Wakefield Alliance Consortium that has GP practices in Normanton , Wakefield, Castleford and Pontefract . I believe that in order for the NHS to continue to improve and meet the challenges of increasing demand from an aging population and increasing cost pressure the NHS needs to become more efficient. Increasing cost pressures is because we are able to do more due to advances in medical technology and drugs - we need to do more for less. Currently I see lots of inefficiencies in the

I went on a tour around the New Pinderfields hospital last week. I was part of a group of GPs who were shown around by the New Hospital Development Manager. We were shown A&E, Intensive Care, Theatres and Recovery and a typical ward. It was very impressive. Pinderfields needs to become more efficient to afford the new hospital and it was easy to see how the new hospital will be more efficient. One block of operating theatres instead of four, a large recovery ward instead of four small recovery wards, very close access to surgical wards and much easier communication between core parts of the hospital. The Emergency Department was particularly impressive - lots more clinical space, separation of adults and childrens and close integration with both adult assessment beds and paediatric assessment beds. So overall I was most impressed. But, and there always was going to be a but ... the new hospital at Pinderfields has 708 beds and at Pontefract there will be 66 beds = 774 beds in total

There seems to have been a bit of panic in the news this week about 'flu vaccination and we have certainly had a few telephone calls from people wanting a 'flu jab, but is it just media hype or is there anything more substantial to the panic we have seen in the news. I have looked at how we are doing with 'flu jabs this year and so far we have given 1,905 - that's a huge number, just under a fifth of our practice population. Our computer system lets us easily check on 'at-risk' groups and 87.5% of our patients on our heart disease register have had a 'flu jab, 87% of patients with COPD and 84.2% of patients with diabetes have had a 'flu jab. We have a target to vaccinate 90% of patients in 'at-risk' groups, so we are well on our way to meeting our target. Another expressed concern is that surgeries have run out of vaccine. We currently have 300 doses left - 150 of these have been reserved (usually for patients who were ill when they were due a ja