Dear Patients,
We are delighted to welcome Dr Clare Harris, a highly respected and experienced GP, who will be joining our practice from the week commencing 17th February. Dr Harris is a four-session, list-holding GP and will be working on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.
As our practice continues to grow, we are committed to recruiting additional clinicians wherever possible (subject to budgets and workforce availability) to meet increasing demand and maintain capacity. We are proud to offer excellent appointment availability, including same-day appointments for urgent clinical needs and routine access typically within seven working days. This performance significantly exceeds both local and national trends.
Come July we will have 19 GPs, all enthusiastic and like minded to provide quality health services.
To help her settle in and create a balanced patient list, we will be redistributing some patients across from our existing GPs to her, in a fair and thoughtful manner. This approach allows us to make the best use of our resources and ensures that each doctor can maintain a manageable list, providing high quality care to all our patients.
Patient Redistribution Process
To establish a new list for Dr Harris we will be moving a proportion of patients from each existing GP based on the first letter of their surname (this time starting from Q). This alphabetical method provides an equitable way of selecting patients for transfer. To minimise disruption, we will vary the surname letter used for future reallocations each time we welcome a new GP. We also exclude patients with a diagnosis of a severe mental health, learning disabilities, palliative or in a care home, who are most in need of stable Continuity of Care.
Ensuring Stability and Continuity of Care
Once the new patient allocations are finalised, the practice cannot accommodate “move-backs.” This decision is essential for maintaining the overall stability of our practice and ensuring that each doctor can provide the highest quality of care. Allowing patients to switch back to their previous GP can create additional workload and administrative burden. Furthermore we believe that this provides fairness and equity: If some patients are allowed to move back while others are not, it could lead to perceptions of favouritism and inequality among patients, which we want to avoid.
While we understand that changes can be unsettling, we believe that these decisions ultimately benefit all patients by fostering a stable environment where meaningful relationships with clinicians can develop over time.
Should for whatever reason you don’t bond with Dr Harris, we allow patients the right to request to move GP once, you can express a preference of gender but not a named individual. You will be allocated to the registering GP at that time.
We will be in contact by SMS or letter, in the next week, if you’re one of the patients being switched.
Thank you for your understanding and support as we continue to work at strengthening our practice, to provide you with the best care we can.