Kings Medical Practice News www.kingmedicalpractice.co.uk

Last weekend the new A&E at Pinderfields has opened and if you have an accident or emergency this is the place to go. Other services that have also moved into the new Pinderfields Hospital include maternity care, children's ward and the Acute Assessment Unit. For an up to date list of services that have moved click here. The other thing that has changed is phone numbers of wards and departments. The new hospital has numbers that begin 54XXXX rather than the 21XXXX from the old hospital. To get a complete list of telephone numbers click here. And of course please remember that A&E is for Accidents and Emergencies. If you are thinking of going to A&E because you can't get an appointment in the surgery then tell us...

I have been really good and careful since starting writing this blog to keep everything reasonable and in moderation but sometimes we receive letters that just beggar belief. We received such a letter last week and I can no longer contain my frustration .... So if you don't want to read a rant click delete now! RANT ON As I am sure you are aware our local Acute Trust is moving into the brand new Pinderfields Hospital during February and March with the bulk of the move happening this weekend (25th to 28th February). Last week we received a letter from Wakefield PCT telling us that the hospital has been coping with high demand since before Christmas (we had noticed because we keep getting faxes about the hospital being on RED alert and when we do try and get a patient admitted they have no beds and we are told to send them to A&E) and asking us to do the following actions to help 'suppress' demand (sounds like they are a dictatorship talking about a democratic uprising!).

Our local Accident and Emergency departments at Pinderfields and Pontefract say that are struggling to cope with increasing numbers of patients. They are particularly concerned at the moment because they are about to move into the new hospital at Pinderfields and are concerned that with a recent rise in the number of attendances they will not be able to cope with the move AND provide a safe service. One of the issues that they say is increasing their demand is the number of patients they are seeing who say they cannot get an appointment with their GP. They are particularly concerned about the number of children who are attending between 5.00 pm and 7.00 pm who they think should have been seen by their GP. The practice does lots of things to unsure that we have enough appointment slots for patients who either need to be seen or think they need to be seen on the same day. We have an on-call doctor who does a lunchtime surgery that is not booked until the morning and the on-call doctors a

Novus Health has started doing vasectomies at Kings Medical Centre. Novus Health is a company set up by local GPs and Hospital Consultants to provide excellent healthcare close to where our patient live with the clear aim of developing and strengthening relationships with Pinderfields and Pontefract. Pinderfields and Pontefract have stopped offering vasectomies and the only way patients can get vasectomies now is to be referred on the NHS to the independent sector. This has in the past usually required travelling away from the local area but with Novus now starting to do vasectomies in Normanton it is much more local and convenient. The vasectomies are undertaken by consultant urologists who did vasectomies at Pinderfields and Pontefract but now will be doing them at Kings Medical Centre on Saturday mornings instead. I can reassure prospective patients that the pile of bricks in our car park has nothing to do with the operation at all ....