Our team of volunteers will be out again this Friday, manning our stall at Stamford market in Red Lion Square, to meet residents and gather more signatures for our petition to end Lakeside’s monopoly of GP services in the town.
When our group was set up, we knew Lakeside patients felt angry, let down and frustrated, but we now know that this is only the tip of an iceberg, concerning healthcare provision in our area, and not just about the Lakeside issues.
We could not, however, have predicted the types of stories we would hear being out and about, as well as on social media, due at some level to the unique set of problems our geographical location poses for residents in and around Stamford. Problems are exacerbated by the fact that we often have to navigate four different counties’ associated commissioning bodies and various Trusts.
The Covid pandemic has, of course, put additional strains on all GP surgeries and BH4S recognises this. However, most of the practices we and other patients are unhappy about began a long time before any of us had ever heard the term “Coronavirus”.
It was with a staggering degree of complacency, therefore, that Lakeside saw fit, in the middle of the worse Pandemic in living memory, to announce to it’s 32,000 patients (some by text, others having to read about it in the papers) that they would be closing the St Mary’s Surgery, citing what we now know to have been a spurious claim that they had no choice, due to the lease ending. They ended the lease, not the landlords.
This was without any patient consultation whatsoever and with no additional facilities to provide suitable healthcare provision to those patients. A fact now borne out by the shocking experience of patients’ desperate efforts to try to get appointments, even for a telephone call with a doctor or nurse, or an online consultation.
The Patients’ Participation Group (PPG), immediately objected and urged the Lakeside Group to hold back on their plans and take stock of the damage their decision would wreak on its patients. The PPG’s thanks for doing what they were contractually obliged to do (represent patients) was to be ostracised by the Lakeside Group, who not only refused to listen (holding patient ‘engagement’ sessions only after being forced to by the CCG, after we pointed out that they had not carried out an obligatory impact assessment), but refused to speak to the committee, as long as members who had opposed the St Mary’s shut-down stayed on that committee. It beggars belief that we are talking here about a group who have been given the responsibility to look after the most precious thing we have – our health!
Whilst we lobby to bring in another GP surgery, we continue to work with all parties to improve provision for hospital services, dentistry, patient transport, screening and other services.
Please come along to Red Lion Square to say hello and talk to us about our campaign.