This week the Prime Minister has announced huge investment in our NHS. By 2023-24, funding will be £20.5 billion/year, or £394 million/week, higher in real terms than it is today.
It is vital that this enormous investment really benefits patients. With that in mind, on Friday Simon Clarke MP met the managers from the Springwood and Garth surgeries in Guisborough and the surgeries in Loftus, Skelton and Brotton. They were also joined by the Springwood surgery’s patient group.
Nobody understands the challenges facing the NHS better than the practice managers, and they had a really useful discussion that gave Simon lots of things to raise with both the local Clinical Commissioning Group and with ministers.
Some of those issues were important ones you might expect, like GP workload and an ageing population.
But there were others Simon had not previously heard of - including the enormous burden some of the practices face with “social prescribing” - people who go to the doctor not with medical issues but to discuss things like benefits or housing, simply because they don’t know to which service to go.
This is clearly something which needs addressing, and pilots that have been held in Redcar to have a dedicated individual in surgeries who can take on this work and free up doctors need to be followed up.
All in all it was a fascinating meeting and they have agreed to meet again in the autumn.