Premises improvements planned at GP surgeries in Spalding, Holbeach, Pinchbeck and Crowland

 

Beechfield Medical Centre, in Spalding, alone has taken on 4,000 additional patients since 2011, rising from 13,500 to close to 17,500.
Building work is imminent there, at The Abbeyview Surgery in Crowland and Munro Medical Centre’s Pinchbeck surgery. Littlebury Medical Centre, in Fishpond Lane, Holbeach, also wants to expand.

At Beechfield Medical Centre, in Beechfield Gardens, work is due to start in the next few weeks on plans to convert a storage room into two additional clinical consulting rooms.

Don McGeorge, practice manager, said the expansion is creating extra space particularly needed because the practice trains GPs.
He added: “Unless we train GPs they are never going to come to Lincolnshire. Lincolnshire has an endemic problem in attracting GPs so there’s a long term benefit to us and our patients in training them.
“Training with us gives GPs the opportunity to realise what a wonderful place Beechfield and Spalding is.”

Whilst a significant amount of the project costs will be met by the surgery itself, Beechfield and the other practices have bid for contributions to project costs from the NHS England Estates and Technology Transformation Fund – a national funding programme to support GP practices to make improvements.

An 11-week programme of improvements at The Abbeyview Surgery, in Thorney Road, is due to begin on Saturday (January 28). The work includes upgrading a treatment room, alterations and refurbishment of toilets, boiler plant renewal and  reception improvements.

A planning application is still awaiting approval for Munro Medical Centre’s surgery in Church Walk, Pinchbeck, for an additional consulting room, change of current layout to provide improved access and increased reception area.

Planning permission has been in place for some time for a two phase expansion that would see a total of six or seven new consulting rooms at Littlebury Medical Centre, but funding is yet to be agreed.
Patient numbers are rising by around ten to 15 per month at the surgery which changed its appointment system this month in a bid to continue meeting demand. All of its rooms are currently in use 8am to 6.30pm every day.
No appointments are now allocated in advance. They must be booked on the day.

Practice manager Denise Chappell said: “The feedback from patients so far is that it is working very well.”