Re-location of Horndean Surgery
As many of you will know, the Horndean Surgery has been looking to re-locate for some years – since before 2012 in fact.
Those of you who know our practice will be aware that it is in a small converted house originally intended for 500 patients. We now have around 5,500. We have seen an 18% increase in registered patients since 2012, including 300 in the last year alone. There is no potential to expand on our existing site, which is up a leafy lane with next-to-no car parking.
My reason for writing to you is that we are delighted to say that our plans are finally coming to fruition and it is our intention to relocate in late September or early October this year to a purpose-built new surgery just 200 or so paces (0.2 miles) from our existing site in Blendworth Lane to 7-9 London Road, PO8 0BN, in the heart of Horndean.
It has been a long process for us, but we have been working with our Patient Participation Group on this since before 2014 and keeping them up to speed with developments and any news, and they are fully supportive of our plans.
We have not only worked with East Hants District Council and a local developer , but we have also liaised closely with our commissioning organisations – initially NHS England and the former Hampshire Primary Care Trust and more recently NHS South Eastern Hampshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) since it took on delegated commissioning responsibilities for primary care services in 2016.
The CCG has received a letter of support for the practice re-location from both the district council and the chairman of Horndean Parish Council.
The patient support for our plans, along with our PPG, and the local parish and district council support, has been invaluable in helping us to secure our new building and we would like to take this further opportunity to thank you for this support.
Clearly moving to a new purpose-built and a much larger site in the centre of Horndean village will provide the community we are proud to serve with improved facilities which are fit for purpose in the 21st century and meet the challenges facing primary care services today. These new premises will give us adequate space to provide a number of things that we cannot currently provide for our patients and staff, including:
- More much-needed clinical space for our existing GPs to improve their services to patients
- A training area for GPs
- Clinical space for nursing staff to help improve their services to patients
- A staff area
- A private area for patients
- A separate kitchen
- A much more appropriate sized waiting room, to further improve facilities for our patients
- Storage space
- Conference/meeting facilities
- Much improved facilities for patients with a disability, parents with pushchairs and the frail elder.
The new premises will not only serve our existing patients, but they will give us the potential to take on new patients from the additional 900 homes being built within a 500 metre radius of the site.
In 2014, in liaison with our Patient Participation Group and Patient Reference Group, we undertook a detailed patients’ questionnaire to help us adapt and develop our services in response to the needs of our patients. In the survey, we asked about potential services that could be run from the new premises which might prove useful to our patients. A pharmacy, physiotherapy, minor surgery and orthopaedic services all featured strongly on our patients’ wish list. There is now a pharmacy next door to our new building and we are in discussions for specialist clinics include a physio, minor surgery and orthopaedic consultants.
We are also working with our Primary Care Network to develop services in the local area – some of which could potentially be offered from the new building. Our PPG is currently looking at a potential dietician coming on board and we hope to have dementia-friendly coffee mornings.
We will be exploring these options further with our patient Participation Group, but we would welcome any view that you might have on this too. We will be writing to the head of household of all our registered patients addresses to bring them up to speed with our proposed timetable, but we are already communicating with patients via the news section of our website, and our posts on our Facebook page have reached more than 3,000 people. This page has been maintained for the last two years.
And we know that a number of you have been following progress in recent years with stories in the local press including The News (Portsmouth), the Petersfield Post and most recently on April 30, 2019), the Horndean Post.
I know that this is a long letter but I thank you for taking the time to read it. If you require any further information, please email or Practice Manager Mrs Jean Smees Jean.Smees@nhs.net.
Yours Sincerely,
Dr Mark Coombe, M.B., B.S. 1989, FRCGP, MFFP, DRCOG, PGCE
Senior Partner