Four more doctors are joining the Victoria Medical Centre in Old Town to help address the huge problems patients face in trying to see a GP.
The centre is also pledging to release non-urgent appointments more frequently and would mke them available every three days to make it easier to book ahead.
And, in an exclusive statement to the Eastbourne Reporter, the VMC said it is looking “urgently” into problems with the telephone system which some patients say requires them to call dozens of times or which cuts them off.
The statement, which you can read in full below, was given to the Eastbourne Reporter via NHS Sussex after we sent several emails over the course of a month asking for a response. We even went to the VMC in person to try to obtain a response.
The Eastbourne Reporter highlighted the problems faced by patients here in a recent feature.
It told how patients, many of them elderly, were queueing outside from 7am and all the day’s appointments were taken by 8.10am.
And we heard how one woman said she would consider driving her Eastbourne relative 230 miles to her own doctor in the West Midlands to be seen quickly
Has it become easier to make an appointment?
When we recently asked on the Old Town Facebook group if matters had improved, a mixed situation was reported.
Out of 140 comments, most people said they still faced huge delays in being seen but about 20 people said they had no issue and saw a doctor easily.
One woman said she had been offered an appointment in early July, six weeks away, while another said she rang 91 times only to eventually find she was 30th in the queue.
Another patient said she gave up after ringing 70 times on each of two days and paid £75 for a private consultation. When she rang the VMC to complain a month later, she said she was offered a GP appointment within 20 minutes.
Michael Cook, 56, (above) a former print worker, is being treated for Stage 4 skin cancer. He was told he had to wait six weeks for an appointment until a Macmillan nurse intervened and an earlier slot was found for him.
Outlining his experiece whe he rang for an appointment, Michael said: “I was told by the receptionist: ‘Sorry, we are at full capacity’ and they kept repeating that as if it were a script. I have tried emailing them, but I never hear back.”
Michael, who lives in Hampden Park, said he was considering moving to a different surgery but his own GP at the VMC is “fantastic, absolutely brilliant” when he has the opportunity of speaking to her.
The £8.4 million centre
The state-of-the-art Victoria Medical Centre opened in 2021. It was built by Primary Health Properties (PHP) at a cost of £8.4 million and merged GP surgeries in converted houses in Green Street, Enys Road and Bolton Road under one roof. The building is let to the GP practice for 25 years.
PHP states on its website that the VMC replaced “failing GP practices unable to cope with increasing patient demand” and that it was designed to be a “flexible building to meet future demand and changing requirements”.
There are currently 14 doctors listed on the website here: seven GP partners and seven further GPs. It is not known if this includes the new doctors.
It is thought around 35,000 patients are registered at the VMC. This may mean each doctor has a list of 2,500 patients; the Office for National Statistics records here that the average GP patient list was 1,700 in October 2022.
The full Victoria Medical Centre statement to the Eastbourne Reporter
A spokesperson said:
“We are sorry to hear that some patients have struggled to arrange an appointment with the Victoria Medical Centre. Like many GP surgeries across the country, we are experiencing an increase in the need for our services, which means we are very busy. To help people access and use our services, we have done the following, and some of this work is ongoing:
:: We are aware of an issue some people have been experiencing with our telephone system when selecting option one, and our telephone provider is looking into this urgently. We understand this is frustrating and apologise for any inconvenience this is causing. In the last year, we introduced a new digital phone system which makes it easier for our teams to manage busy periods and provides patients with information about their place in the queue. As part of this, we also offer call-backs to patients, so they do not have to wait in the telephone queue.
:: We know some patients prefer to arrange appointments in-person at our reception desk. To make this a smoother process, we have introduced a ticket system which enables patients to sit in the waiting room, rather than wait outside, or queue at the desk.
:: Advanced booking for non-urgent appointments will come into effect from June. This means more appointments will be added to the system every three days on a rolling basis, which we hope will make it easier for people to arrange a non-urgent and pre-booked appointments. We also encourage patients to make use of our online consultation option, Engage Consult. This service allows patients to tell us about their health issue from their smartphone or computer, and a clinician will provide a telephone consultation to discuss, provide advice, prescribe, or if necessary, arrange for you to see a clinician at a time that works for you. You can access EngageConsult on our website: https://victoriamedicalcentre.co.uk/online-consultations/.
:: Like many GP surgeries, we have struggled to recruit, but we are pleased to report that we have welcomed four new GPs and three new admin staff members to our team who will help us provide more appointments and take more calls during busy periods.
“We encourage our patients to raise a complaint with our team if they are dissatisfied with the services provided, and our Patient Participation Group (PPG) is there to ensure the voices of our patients are heard and help us continue to improve.
“Find out more on our website.”
:: Comments are welcome. They are pre-moderated and may be edited for clarity and to avoid potential libel
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