Kings Medical Practice News www.kingmedicalpractice.co.uk

I have always kept a sharp eye on the number of patients that are registered with us and this morning we have passed a milestone - we now have over 12,000 patients. Yesterday we had 11,997 patients and this morning when I looked we had 12,007 to be precise! I don't very often indulge in looking back but since we have passed such a huge milestone I think I can be afforded such an indulgence. When I first joined the practice in 1984 we had 4,500 patients and there were two full time GPs and Dr Ellis worked part-time. Oh how things have changed - there are now 8 fully qualified doctors, 5 doctors in training and we are open from 8.00 am to 6.30 pm every day with extra opening on some early mornings, some early evenings and Saturday mornings! We are very pleased that patients have chosen to register with us and I extend a warm welcome to all our new patients!

We have been reviewing our Repeat Prescription System and one of the issues that has come up is how do we ensure that Repeat Prescriptions are collected from Reception by the person who is authorised to collect it. If you order a Repeat Prescription then you can collect it in person but we will also allow your representative to collect and even a pharmacy to collect if for you. The issue we have identified is how can we ensure that the person collecting it is who they say they are and that they have your permission to collect it on your behalf. Some practices in our local area want proof of identity and a signature for every repeat prescription that is collected from Reception. We discussed this at length and concluded that this would impose a large workload on Reception for little benefit. We did however identify a subgroup of Repeat Prescriptions where we thought that we should implement such a system namely when people come to collect Repeat Prescriptions that are for Controlled Dru

We have started to look at the reasons why our patients visit our local Accident and Emergency departments. In the course of an average week about 90 of our patients will visit A&E and half of these visits will occur between 8 am and 6.30 pm when the surgery is open. When we look at the letters we get back following patients attendances it looks to us as if a lot of patients could have come and been treated at the surgery instead. It costs our commissioning budget at least £80 per each A&E attendance whereas if the patients had come to the surgery instead if would not have cost anything at all. We are about to start contacting patients and asking them why they went to A&E? What could the surgery have offered so that they could have seen us rather than A&E? Do our patients know about other NHS Choices instead of A&E? We are just at the start of this process and are going to use the data we collect to help decide if we need to change our opening times. For example w