Moving to Dairy Crest

OK. Plans are in place. Things are moving.

We will be operating from the Dairy Crest Social Club building (pictured) on Monday 29th November.

Looks lovely doesn't it!

Boots shop will be there too, but may not be able to dispense medicines. We are pretty sure it is Morrisons who have appealed against the PCTs decision to allow the pharmacy to move there with us, so that is now held up in further red tape.
It seems one major point of the objection was the lack of disabled access.
I've just been there today (16th Nov) and walked up the disabled access ramp that had been specified to be there all along. I think their appeal is, as they say, "vexatious" and I feel the PCT should dismiss it.

How will we all squeeze in?

We'll just have to get used to losing our sense of personal space, and have a load of Portakabins too.

Not so sure the midwives will be there though.

It seems their management it looking at ways of reducing costs- proposals include having NO home visits for antenatal or postnatal checks. All these checks would be done at their clinic. The clinic wouldn't be at the Surgery either as it is currently. One option they are looking at has the patients on the Dartmouth and Totnes patch having a Newton Abbot Hospital based midwife for all their care. This would mean you having to go to one of their community clinics for even the 3rd day postnatal checkup. Just imagine, drained and exhausted, with a newborn child and a perineum bruised and torn, dragging yourself the clinic for a  check up. What impact this all might have on your ability to get a home birth I don't know. What it would mean is that if you had your baby in Torbay then you certainly wouldn't have the same midwife as had done your antenatal care.

Health care assistants would do much of the work currently done by trained midwives- including some of the postnatal checks etc. I can't believe that would be safe.

It does seem as though now they've built Newton hospital they are having to justify its existence- by dragging all and sundry there from all over the place for whatever reason. 

There is a posh delivery suite at Newton though- currently though only 3 or 4 births a month. You can park there though.

While I am ranting... has anyone seen any sign of any work starting at Rushbrook?

Back in February / March we finally had the possibility of moving temporarily into Rushbrook finally removed.

"The project work and pre planning we have already undertaken with regard to Rushbrook together with our timings, mean it is likely we will need to commence work on the site before your centre will be ready for re-occupation"  was the message we had in March. At that point we could have got going and been well settled in with building work at Leatside well under way.... "could we back in for New Year???"

As it is we have had to use a less suitable site at much greater expense. Much more.

No going back now but it makes me very cross.

Does anyone know how Rushbrook came to be in Devon County Councils hands?- did they buy it off Dr Jellicoe? Does anyone walk round there and still hear a faint distant call of a peacock?

Red Tape

Thankfully, and perhaps surprisingly, as a GP I seldom get tangled in red tape.
Usually in my profession if something needs to be done I am in a position to just do it.
There is the overriding principle of doing whatever is best for the patient and in the end that really does trump all other concerns most of the time.
In business however life is different.

As you may be aware we are having to relocate the Surgery for a few months while some improvement work is done.
Relocating Boots Pharmacy is turning out to be tricky.
We've had Midas build a space at Unigate for the pharmacy to move in to. That is the easy bit.
Getting the PCT authorities to agree that it is alright for them to move there temporarily is another matter.
It turns out that pharmacy rules are complex.
For a temporary move the pharmacy is not allowed to move more than 500m from its original position. Or perhaps 800m in exceptional circumstances.
A temporary move apparently has to be for 12 months at least (?), but we hope to move for 6 months at the most.
Various committees have to look at the proposed move and invite feedback.
The committee met and after looking at the objections (yes, there were objections, we think from Morrisons) passed it to the Devon PCT to agree.
When they met they deferred a decision til December, because they were apparently busy working out how to manage their own demise. (PCTs are devolving their authority to consortia of GPs)
All this time we are accumulating costs having had to engage Midas to start the project as well as paying interset on the loan we've taken out to do the work, and not getting any work done.
It looks now as though we are just going to have to move anyway and hope that Boots can sort themselves out.
I hope that someone from the PCT can then come down and see if a pharmacy can function in the middle of a building site with all the noise and dust, power going on and off and all the other difficulties of access.
Common sense may then prevail.
It would be better if they could make that, what seems to be, common-sense decision now, but the suits are so tied up in due process that the right decision may never be made it seems.
Quite why our Primary Care trust has no apparent interest in Primary Care is beyond me.
We are taking a risk borrowing a LOT of money to provide the people of Totnes with a good quality Health Centre / Surgery that should last a good few years now. You'd have thought they might show some interest or support.
As it stands we are now looking at starting work from the Unigate / Dairy Crest / Daw's Dairy site on Monday 15th Nov. We'll let everyone know when it is for definite.

Another blog one day might be on why it was we couldn't use Rushbrook temporarily.
As and when I find out why that is I'll let you know here.