Kings Medical Practice News www.kingmedicalpractice.co.uk

This is the first blog I have written for nearly three weeks because I have been on annual leave and this is my first day back! Whilst I have been away we have had some really good results about some of the things that can be measured about our performance. We have had the end of year outturn for our prescribing budget. Our prescribing budget for 2010/11 was £1,697,945 and our outturn was £1,931,885. The outturn is only (!) £230,000 above the budget but the good news is that the annual increase in our prescribing has reduced from 10.5% in April 2010 to 2.9% in March 2011. Our budget for 2011/12 is being increased by nearly 16% so if we continue to keep the annual increase in costs down we may end up in budget next year. The other really good news is the publication of the last quarters NHS Patient Survey results. When asked if they could see their doctor within 48 hours, 78% of people said yes and 87% of people were able to make an appointment more than 48 hours in advance. We cont

Our 0844 surgery telephone number is under the spotlight again from the PCT and patients. The 0844 number allows us to use a sophisticated digital telephone system so that patients never get an engaged tone and we can arrange how our staff work so that we have more people answering the phone at peak times. Calls to our 0844 number costs just over 5p per minute from a BT landline. This is less expensive than the standard BT rate to a normal geographic number but will cost patients more than calling a normal geographic number if you have a telephone package that includes free daytime local calls because calls to 0844 numbers are often excluded from the package. Of course calls from mobiles are considerably more expensive. It varies according to your package but I found prices varying from 40p per minute from Orange to 20p on an o2 monthly contract. If you are concerned about the cost of the call to the surgery then do ask our staff to call you back. We will do this and of course we routi