Response from St Augustine's to concerns about Saltford Branch Surgery - Saltford Parish Council

SPC is grateful to the SCA for passing on the following correspondence from St Augustine’s Surgery, following queries about GP provision in Saltford, and the use of the Saltford Surgery during the COVID19 pandemic.

The response from the Practice Manager sent to the SCA on Friday 15th January 2021 is as follows:

Our GP’s are assessing all patients via telephone initially and only seeing patients face to face when clinically necessary. The Saltford Branch Surgery is not able to accept walk in enquiries now. We hope things will return to normal soon.

We are starting to reintroduce monitoring for long-term health conditions if it is essential or if it can be done by online questionnaire, phone, or video call.

Repeat prescriptions are collected daily. There are several other ways to request prescriptions, via our online services, the NHS app or online contact form, you can also ask the pharmacy to order your repeat prescription.

We are delighted to work alongside West View and Temple House to offer a local COVID vaccination service. We will call /contact you individually when we are ready to book an appointment, please do not call with queries as this makes it hard for people with immediate medical problems to get through to the receptionists.

We now have a new telephone system in place. Our main number will remain the same 0117 986 2343. The old Saltford branch number will no longer be in service.

The Primary Care team at St Augustine’s have worked hard over the 10 months to maintain access for all our patients and care homes at a time of high demand and high levels of staff sickness.

· Offering the same appointment levels as pre pandemic (this equates to 5k appointments in Dec).

· Changing the way, we work to offer over half of the appointments remotely to avoid the need for patients to travel.

· Continuing home visits as required.

· Staffing the COVID assessment centres.

· Delivering our largest ever Flu campaign by vaccinating 3638 eligible patients – this included pop-up events in Saltford / Scout HQ.

· We are about to embark an intensive local COVID vaccination programme.

We are responsible for the safety of both our staff and patients – many of whom are high risk categories, so we must follow strict infection control guidance. To reduce this risk, we will only arrange face to face assessment where it is clinically necessary. This is in line with all other healthcare services and more important than ever with the new COVID variant and further lockdowns.

Staff continue to work at Saltford, but the reception area is closed. The branch surgery is unsuitable for ad hoc walk-in queries and large patient clinics, as the parking is limited, and the waiting area is small. Face to Face appointments for GP’s and nurses have been temporarily relocated to the main surgery where we have ample parking to ask people to wait in cars prior to their appointment.

Hopefully as staff and patients start to benefit from the vaccination programme we can again revisit how we increase our face to face appointments in Saltford. We will continue to support patients who may highlight any specific transport issues with the support of the community volunteers. Support is also available for prescriptions and samples.

We would like to thank the residents of Saltford for their continued patience and support.

Message from SPC: More information about support for Saltford residents during Lockdown 3.0 can be found at SPC’s news page here.

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