Western Elms Surgery 317 Oxford Road, Reading RG30 1AT

THE PRIME MINISTERS CHALLENGE FUND 8 TIL 8 OPENING

You will have seen on the news and in the papers yesterday and today that the Prime Minister made available a challenge fund of £50million to improve patient access within surgeries. This would include the use of skype consultations, opening at 8pm every day and working 8am to 8pm over the weekend, generally using different initiatives to improve the constant issues of appointment availability

All Surgeries were encouraged to make a bid and everyone knew from the onset that not all applicants would be successful.  North West Reading CCG, whom we are a member of, joined forces with South Reading and Wokingham CCGs and spent a lot of time preparing a bid which we thought would benefit all of our patients. 

Unfortunately we were advised at the weekend that we were unsuccessful.  The successful areas have now been released and the nearest area to us who will benefit from this will be Slough.

We will however continue to move forward with in house systems to improve your access and would hope that later on this year you will be able to make appointments on line and we will be reviewing the ordering of prescriptions via a different system.

LIST CLOSURE

WITH IMMEDIATE EFFECT

We are sorry to advise all prospective patients that we have had to close our list with immediate effect.

 This is not a decision that we take lightly but our responsibility is to those patients who are already registered with us.

 We will be working with NHS England in the hope that measures can be taken to ensure that we open it again as soon as we can.

 Alternative surgeries are available on NHS Choices website or ask at the desk for contact details for the TVPCA who will help you register elsewhere.

 Our apologies for any inconvenience caused