Question
Since the GP at Burma Hills has retired and local residents are being redirected to the Wokingham Medical Centre, I understand there is talk and promises but at the moment no firm plans to restore GP services at this practice. I am very concerned about this and have a petition to draw attention to this which has picked up support. I noted the update from the CCG but the date has passed with no GP still in Burma Hills.
Certain Councillors have commented on Facebook that this and the petition was scaremongering and not correct. What is the truth in regards to Burma Hills and is there any update?
Minutes:
Question
Since the GP at Burma Hills has retired and local residents are being redirected to the Wokingham medical centre, I understand there is talk and promises but at the moment no firm plans to restore GP services at this practice. I am very concerned about this and have a petition to draw attention to this which has picked up support. I noted the update from the CCG but the date has passed with no GP still in Burma Hills.
Certain Councillors have commented on Facebook that this and the petition was scaremongering and not correct. What is the truth in regards to Burma Hills and is there any update?
Answer
I share your concern about the situation at Burma Hills. This arose because the CCG allowed the Primary Care Network to remove the face-to-face GP service with no public consultation at all. This is simply not acceptable. When we complained to the CCG in February, we were given a firm assurance that face to face services would resume at this practice as soon as the vaccination clinic they were running ended. We went back to the CCG last week and have received a commitment that the full range of primary care medical services, which means face-to-face GP services, will restart in April. It is the responsibility of the practice to communicate to local residents.
We will continue to watch this situation and apply pressure to ensure this service is fully restored. Therefore, to my mind, your petition is very appropriate as it represents the just concerns of the 2,000 people on the roll at Burma Hills who had their face-to-face GP service withdrawn with no notice. I can't really give you a sensible explanation for the social media comments that have been made around this issue.
We see the withdrawal of a face-to-face GP service effecting 2,000 residents as a serious problem. We see our role as to raise resident issues and obtain a resolution from the CCG. Councillor Kerr commented that on social media that the practice was never closing and this story was scaremongering. This was factually wrong. Imagine how you would feel if you were one of the 2,000 people on the roll at Burma Hills who had their face-to-face GP service withdrawn with no notice and were told this issue was not real. The bottom line is that people can say what they like. I can assure you that we will remain committed to focusing on the issues our residents face and demanding solutions to their concerns.
Supplementary Question:
What does this say about the approach of the CCG towards GP practices in central Wokingham? We have had this issue at Burma Hills and continued issues at Wokingham Medical Centre, and who is responsible for these problems?
Supplementary Answer:
GP services are commissioned by the CCG and WBC has no direct control over them, therefore the direct answer to your question is that the CCG are responsible for all GPs. However, this does not mean we will stand by and ignore problems. I share you concerns about the performance of GPs in central Wokingham. We in Wokingham are fortunate to have some very good GPs delivering great services. However, the Wokingham Medical Centre, as I have commented here before, is ranked in the bottom 5% in England, and now we have this serious issue at Burma Hills. We have been calling on the CCG for many months to do something about this and have raised this with our local MPs. We have now raised this issue with the ICS, and I have a meeting next week with its head, Dr James Kent, to take this further. We will not rest on this until I get a response. I would share with you the issue with Burma Hills did raise an interesting response at first from the CCG. In initial discussion with our officers, a senior CCG representative said something along the lines of ‘Why are Wokingham always complaining about GPs? GPs in Wokingham are generally good’, which is true. He then went on to say that ‘GPs in Reading are not very good but Reading never complain.’ Now my message to the CCG on this is simple, we are not Reading, and we will continue to praise good GP performance where it happens, but also to call out poor performance, and to demand solutions as we know that this really matters to all of our residents.