Noticeboard

Coronavirus Information

The NHS in England and Public Health England (PHE) are extremely well prepared for outbreaks of new infectious diseases. The NHS has put in place measures to ensure the safety of all patients and NHS staff while also ensuring services are available to the public as normal.

The risk to the general public is moderate. If you have arrived back to the UK from Italy, mainland China, Thailand, Japan, Republic of Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia or Macau within 14 days, follow the specific advice for returning travellers - click here .

Call 111 now if you've been:

To Wuhan or Hubei Province in China in the last 14 days (even if you do not have symptoms)
To other parts of China, including Macau and Hong Kong, in the last 14 days and have a cough, high temperature or shortness of breath (even if it's mild)
To Italy, Thailand, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Republic of Korea or Malaysia in the last 14 days and have a cough, high temperature or shortness of breath (even if it's mild)
In close contact with someone with confirmed coronavirus

Do not go to a GP surgery, community pharmacy or hospital. Call 111, stay indoors and avoid close contact with other people.

Repeat prescription requests are no longer accepted by phone. Use the online service, post or request in person.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION FROM THE PARTNERS AT COLNE VALLEY GROUP PRACTICE

The partners at the Practice would like patients to be aware of some proposed changes at CVGP.

Staffing

Nationally, there is a shortage of GPs whilst there is an increasing demand for appointments.

We have tried unsuccessfully to recruit for GPs who have left the Practice. We will continue to try and recruit and in the meantime are employing locum GPs in order to maintain the current high level of care we provide for our patients.

This may mean you are unable to see your first choice of GP, particularly for urgent problems.

Also nationally, there are funding issues for surgeries and we are affected by these, which in turn affect our ability to compete competitively in recruitment. Other Practices have been more public about their funding issues and we felt we needed to raise awareness that all Practices are affected to varying degrees.

Appointments

We are aware that waiting time for routine appointments may be longer than patients would wish. Again this is reflected nationally.

In order to attempt to address this we propose to change the appointment system from the current triage system for urgent problems with routine appointments for less urgent issues, to a greater proportion of same day appointments for urgent problems.

Routine appointments will still be available.

As part of our efforts to maintain our service, we have employed a clinical pharmacist and are looking at employing other clinicians to see selected patients in addition to our excellent Advance Nurse Practitioners.

For this to work well for patients and the clinicians, we have instructed our staff to ask some basic details of the reason for the appointment. Please do not be offended if you ring and they ask these questions, it is so they can offer a suitable appointment or suggest you seek advice from another community service, for example, a community pharmacist or optician (for acute eye problem the PEARS scheme has been in operation for several years).

If your problem is not urgent please make a routine appointment in order to leave the urgent appointments for those patients who genuinely need these.

If you do need a same day appointment we would ask that you accept the time offered to allow later appointments to be used for patients presenting later in the day.

There are also EXTENDED ACCESS APPOINTMENTS available so please see the information under the appointments tab. These appointments are on an evening and weekend.

Premises

With regard to the move from Croft House to the Globe Mill, we have had confirmation that our proposal has been agreed. For more information, please see our relocation information pages.

Patients have also expressed concerns about the state of the building at Marsden; this may have contributed to rumours that there are plans to close Marsden Health Centre.

We can confirm there are NO plans to close it.

CVGP rent this building and are not responsible for maintenance and upkeep, however, we have raised a number of issues regarding maintenance with NHS property services and these are in the process of being addressed.

In line with GP contract requirements, all patients at Colne Valley Group Practice have been assigned a named GP. Please be assured that this does not affect your choice of clinician to see at the surgery in any way. If you wish to know the name of your named GP, please contact reception or ask at your next consultation.

The Practice Leaflet is available here Colne Valley Group Practice practice leaflet