News & Issues
(REVERSE CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER)
AUGUST 2011
Worcester Walk-in Health Centre supplies doctors to local stroke rehabilitation unit
Read more.... HERE
Monday, March 21, 2011
Walker walks into walk-in health centre
Read more.... HERE
Last year, rather than sending out Christmas cards the Worcester Walk-in Health Centre (WIHC) sent out a Christmas email message to all our suppliers, locums and associated organisations that we work with. Instead of buying cards, the company made a donation to Acorns Children’s Hospice and the WIHC are doing the same this year. In addition, instead of sending cards to each other, our staff are writing Christmas messages to each other on a Christmas tree poster and making a further donation to Acorns. In total, the organisation will have raised over £100 for Acorns.
Acorns supports nearly 600 life limited and life threatened children and 800 families, including those who have been bereaved, across the heart of England.
Most of their funding comes from public donations. As a charity, Acorns needs to generate over 70% of the income required to run its services itself, with the remainder coming from statutory funding.
With hospice running costs of over £6million a year, Acorns relies heavily on community support and fundraising events to raise money.
We urgently need your support to help us continue to provide our specialist services free of charge to families.
To find out how you can support Acorns please visit www.acorns.org.uk or call 01564 825000.
Worcester Walk-in Health Centre is expanding it's contraception services and will now be offering the fitting of coils and implants. For more information please download the flyer.
Sally Addison-SmithThe Worcester Walk-in Health Centre welcomes Sally Addison-Smith as the Centre’s new Lead Nurse.
Sally previously worked within Gloucestershire PCT at a GP surgery in a deprived area. As well as a management role, Sally’s expertise as an Advanced Nurse Practitioner means that she can prescribe and will have a very positive impact on the centre’s appointment availability. We welcome her to the team.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Successful first year for new health centre
Read more.... HERE
Happy Birthday! On 10th August 2010 the Worcester Walk-in Health Centre has been open 1 year. We continue to achieve 100% in our patient satisfaction surveys and achieving all our targets. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the hard work and effort made by our staff during this exciting year. We also thank our patients, suppliers and customers in the crucial part they have all had to play in the development and success of the new, government-backed easy access health centre.
Malcolm SampsonOne year on since the opening of the Worcester Walk-in Health Centre, we would like to welcome Malcolm Sampson as our new Centre Manager. Malcolm has worked within the NHS for nearly 5 years in both Practice Manager and Walk-in Centre Manager roles. We welcome him onto the team to take the Centre forward in the next phase of its development and navigate our progress during these new challenging times within the NHS.
We would like to thank John Clarke, the outgoing Centre Manager, for all his invaluable input throughout the mobilisation and implementation phases of the Walk-in Centre project. John joined Elgar Healthcare in April 2009. We wish him well in his new role.
APRIL 2010
Elaine Youngson
Clare HelmWe are delighted to welcome four new members of staff to join the Worcester Walk-in Health Centre’s team. Clare Helm is our new Lead Practice Nurse and Dr Elaine Youngson, a new part-time GP have both joined us. Amongst the other usual clinical duties, Clare and Elaine’s expertise has now allowed us increase the number of appointments and services, including being able to offer more appointments for cervical smear screening. We also welcome two new members to our admin team Leah Southall and Margaret Seabourne. Welcome to all!
This new phase for the Worcester Walk-in Health centre reflects the early successes we have achieved in the first 9 months since we opened. We are delighted that nearly 900 patients have now registered with us – appointing us as their main registered GP. We are therefore well on schedule to reach our target list size of 1200 by the end of Year 1. We are able to offer up to 72 GP appointments per day incorporating our pre-bookable appointments for our registered patients and appointments for our walk-in patients.Our monthly patient surveys have revealed a 100% success rate in achieving full marks in our service and customer care.
Common things that our registered patients remark about us include:
- “the staff are friendly”
- “The doctors have time, listen to me and treat me as an individual”
- “Nice clean new facilities”
- “Convenience of opening hours”
- “Inability to get appointments with previous doctor”
- “Quick and efficient service”
Common reasons why our walk-in patients visit our service:
- Inability to get appointments with their normal registered doctor
- “doctors are easy to speak to and better than my usual GP”
- cleanliness of new building and facilities
- staff are polite and friendly
- easy service to understand and access
- speedy and efficient service
- “fits into my working day and I do not have to take time off work to see a GP”
- convenience of opening hours
JANUARY 2010
Despite the cold weather conditions, the Worcester Walk-in Health Centre’s service has been unaffected and has continued to open every day for its full opening hours of 12 hours a day. In fact, on some days the service has even exceeded it’s normal capacity by seeing extra patients.
Unsurprisingly the service was well used in the run up to Christmas and then demand trailed off later on 24th December. Christmas Day was quiet with only 29 GP consultations on that day. Demand then increased considerably from 26th December peaking on 27th/28th as patients could not see their own GPs were trying to use other services. Many patients tried to access more than one service, with some trying the Out of Hours service and then coming to the Walk-in Centre as they chose the quickest route to get a service. Demand exceeded our planned capacity on 27th & 28th but all patients were assessed and those who needed to be see a doctor were accommodated. Patient demand remained high on 29th-31st January but within our maximum capacity.
On 31st December the PCT requested that we put on some extra GP appointments over the New Year weekend. Despite short notice we were able to put in another 7 hrs or 42 GP appointments over Saturday and Sunday. New Years Day was an average working day for us with 50 consultations. Demand increased tremendously on 2nd/3rd January with additional capacity being used in part and we were booked up for most of these 2 days.
Despite the continued cold weather forecast for the next week to ten days, the centre expects for its excellent performance to continue.
OCTOBER 2009
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Want to see a doctor? Step this way..
Read more.... HERE
AUGUST 2009
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Worcester Walk-In Health centre to open its doors to patients
Read more.... HERE