Wychwood Surgery - Pharmacy Appeal June 2010
Your services are still under threat
Follow-up information

Members of the Patient Involvement Group thank everyone who wrote to the Chief Executive of Oxfordshire PCT voicing their concerns on the opening of a pharmacy in Shipton-under-Wychwood. The consequences of such a decision will damage the services offered by our Surgery. The Surgery’s Appeal has been submitted to NHS Litigation Authority and any further representations and evidence to support the Appeal must be submitted by 23rd June 2010. Therefore we continue to ask for your continued support for the surgery throughout this process. Please do this as soon as possible.

	If a pharmacy opens all patients living within 1 mile or 1.6km (as the crow flies) of it will no longer be able to have their medicines dispensed by the surgery.
	The decision to allow a pharmacy to open has not involved true and transparent public consultation with those who would be affected most by the service changes and where the Parish and District Councils have been asked for their recommendations and concerns these have not been heeded. More details on the issues are given below. Issues around Rurality, lack of public transport, access for the elderly, mothers with young children, the disabled and those with reduced mobility do not appear to have been taken into consideration.
	Please write voicing your concerns to the NHS Litigation Authority, 30 Victoria Avenue, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, HG1 5PR or email fhsau@nhsla.com with a copy to your MP, The Rt Hon David Cameron MP, PM either by post to 10, Downing Street, SW1, or email AldenN@parliament.uk please also copy to Catherine Hitchens, Patient Involvement Group, c/o Pedlar’s, Orchard Ground, Fifield, Chipping Norton, OX7 6HG or email to: catherine.lordlandry@yahoo.co.uk
	Correspondence needs to be sent before 23rd June, 2010. If you have not already done so please sign one of the petition sheets which are held at Shipton and Milton Post Offices, Ascott Village Shop, Leafield Village Shop, the Wychwood Surgery, or in Fifield c/o Catherine Hitchens.

GP Surgeries are funded through General Medical Service payments to provide standard General Medical Services. Wychwood Surgery offers a greater level of service than funded by General Medical Services payments and it is this greater level of service that is threatened by this decision. Access to both doctors and nurses at the Surgery is in excess of those practices which rely solely on General Medical Services income. This decision will have a knock-on effect to all patients as it will lead to a substantial reduction in funding to the Surgery. This will ultimately lead to the loss of doctor and nurse availability and dispensing staff, which in turn will lead to reduced access to services provided by the Surgery. At present, if after seeing your doctor, you require a blood test or ECG you can see the nurse at the same visit but in future it is likely you would have to make a further appointment, possibly up to a week later, for that procedure. The Surgery would be left with reduced capacity to deal with minor injuries and minor surgery meaning that patients would have to travel to Oxford or Banbury. The daily walk-in surgeries would also be under threat as there would be fewer doctors and nurses available. The Surgery currently provides 24hr Palliative Care; this is over and above General Medical Services and will be threatened if funding is reduced. It is likely to increase the number of Out of Hours contacts by our patients as there would be reduced access to see a doctor or nurse on the same day.

The Oxfordshire PCT states that it wants to “commission from the Pharmacy extra services in addition to dispensing prescriptions,” and lists the following:

These services are already provided by the Surgery, some of which the PCT currently funds the surgery to carry out and others not. The Surgery is not permitted to offer over the counter medicines but these are already available at St Michael’s Stores (Shipton PO) and the Milton Co-op.

The Surgery dispensary is open from 8.15am to 6.30pm every weekday and remains open until the last patient has left the building. It is also open on Saturday mornings. A small local pharmacy would find it economically impossible to open for these extended hours and would close for lunch. Medicines can only be handed out when a pharmacist is actually on the premises. At present the Surgery can alter and deliver monitored dose medicine, on the day the change is made, it is unlikely that this service would be offered by the pharmacy.

In such a rural area, the great difficulties for many of those living within 1.6km of the pharmacy cannot be overstated. They will have to arrange to take their prescriptions to the pharmacy and then arrange to collect them after they have been dispensed. There is little public transport available in the villages, the immediate vicinity of the premises for which permission has been granted is on a busy main road with very limited parking.

When writing your letter it would be helpful if you could highlight some aspect of the surgery which has been particularly helpful to you – perhaps treatment for an injury without having to go to A & E, or minor surgery without lengthy and numerous journeys to Banbury or Oxford, as we have poor ambulance response times and no nearby access to a Minor Injuries Unit, perhaps support when you most needed it through serious illness of yourself, or someone close. Please also stress the rural nature of this area, the paucity of public transport, the difficulty of getting to hospitals, or from the surgery to the pharmacy.

Thank you for all your help and continued support.
Wychwood Surgery Patient Involvement Group.