Folkestone & Hythe District: 25% of patients belong to failing GP Surgeries

Nearly 25% of patients registered at GP practices in Folkestone & Hythe District belong to a practice that either requires improvement or is rated inadequate according to the Care Quality Commission.

The four surgeries are

• Park Farm Surgery Folkestone –  inadequate

• The Manor Clinc  Folkestone – requires improvement

• Sun Lane Surgery Hythe – inadequate

• Oaklands Surgery Hythe – requires improvement

Between them they have a total of 27,561 patients registered with them in Jan 2019 according to NHS Digital data. This is equivalent to 23.86% of all patients registered with GP’s in Folkestone & Hythe District.

Also nearly 20% one in five patients registered at a GP in the South Kent Coast CCG area have to wait more than 14 days to get an appointment, according to NHS digital data. To put that into numbers 7,145 must wait more than 14 days to see a GP.

Fourteen months after the closure of the Folkestone East Family Practice it would appear that all patients have been transferred to new surgeries.

We know that interviews for International GP’s to relocate to Kent & Medway happened in Maidstone in Nov 2018. We have had a spate of retirements of GP’s across the district leaving surgeries significantly stretched. The £20,000 golden hello’s do not seem to have worked and we do not know if any GP’s have taken up the lucrative packages on offer to relocate to our wonderful district.

Finally, we note that our CCG, South Kent Coast Care Commissioning Group has failed to maintain the minutes of the meetings of the – Shepway Locality Patient Participatory Group – which is a is a positive and constructive way of enabling local patient views to be heard by the CCG. Alas, we the members of the public who live in the district are not allowed to read them.

The Shepwayvox Team

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