We are today launching our practice fundraising campaign to help support and improve our dispensing service to our patients. Our aim is to raise enough funds to purchase a prescription collection unit for each of our three surgeries. The collection units provide a safe, quick, and secure way for patients to collect their pre ordered medication from the surgery of their choice, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Why are we fundraising?

There is only one pharmacy in our 600 square mile practice area. As with many rural areas, this means that GP practices not only prescribe necessary medication for patients but also dispense the medication to the patient. We are unique in that we dispense to the vast majority of our patients. Given our list size of 11,200 patients this means we dispense up to 1000 items a day from our three surgeries (almost double what a large city pharmacy would dispense). This workload is continuing to rise and becoming increasingly more complex. This causes issues not only for our patients, but for our practice team working under increased pressure.

Current challenges:

• A major challenge for the practice is being able to turn around patients’ medication orders from the point of order to dispensing due to the well-known challenges of sourcing medication that is increasingly affecting pharmacies and dispensing doctors.
• We also have a very elderly patient population who tend to rely on family or friends to collect their medication. Those people are increasingly working away from the area and hence struggle to get back by 6pm to collect their family member’s medication.
• Limitations of our IT system also mean we cannot currently confirm to our volume of dispensing patients via text message or email that their medication is ready to collect which we know causes frustration to many of our patients.
• Staffing recruitment and retention can be an issue in a rural area such as ours, the use of technology would support our team and boost resilience.

Whilst we do generate income from dispensing (as a community pharmacy would), in our practice, the dispensing income has always been used to support the provision of medical care across our rural area and three surgeries.  Our funding covers our main site in Llanfyllin only. With the increasing pressures and underfunding of general practice as a whole, that entire income is now needed to support funding the dispensary staff and primary care team. For more information on primary care funding issues, please visit: Wales save our surgeries campaign (bma.org.uk)

What are we proposing?

We want to bring in a prescription collection unit for each of our sites. These units will allow our patients to collect their medication at a convenient time for them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They will also help us future proof our practice, manage increased demand on our services, improve our services, and support staff retention and moral.

We have spoken with other practices that are using these machines and they have seen a huge positive effect on both their patients and staff.

For those patients who choose to sign up to collecting their medication from the collection unit they will receive a text informing them that their medication is ready to collect at their chosen site.

This text will also contain a unique code which will allow them to collect their medication from the collection machine at a time convenient them, either inside or outside our core opening hours.

By patients using this service, this will allow our dispensing staff to give more support to patients who need more help with their medication, medication queries and explanations of how to take medications and relay messages from the Doctors about changes.

Patients who just need to pick up medication, working people and those collecting for relatives would not have to wait in the surgery to collect, hence saving their time.  The medication dispensing machines will be an added service at the practice and will be very much patient choice as to whether they wish to collect their medication in this way as dispensary counters will remain manned during opening hours.

These machines cost in the region of £35,000 per machine, hence this fundraiser is a huge request for our population as we will need three. If you would like to know more about these units and how they will benefit our patients and practice, please visit the following links:

Pharmaself24 Automated Prescription-Collection Solution (omnicell.co.uk)

MedPoint: Automated Prescription Collection | 24/7 Medicine Collection (medpointuk.com)

Benefits:

• By purchasing a dispensing collection unit for each surgery, we aim to provide a safe and secure way for patients to collect their pre ordered medication at a time convenient to them.
• To reduce queues at peak times for patients collecting their medication
• To give patients the confidence that their medication is ready for collection without making a lengthy journey when it may not be ready.
• To allow our dispensary team more time to spend with those patients who would still need to collect their medication via the dispensary during working hours to discuss their medications or to ask for advice.
• To support our dispensing team in performing their daily tasks and support staff retention and morale.

We are asking if anyone can support us in the way of a donation to our fundraiser however big or small.

If you would like to find out more information about the campaign or make a contribution towards our medication collection please contact Juliet Sagar, our Managing Partner via email - Practice.Manager.w96012@wales.nhs.uk

We thank you again for your support in helping us to provide a better service for our patients and support our team.

We sadly say goodbye at the end of March to two of our GP partners, Dr Sarah Breese, and Dr Alex Cameron.

Dr Breese with us at the practice since 2012 and Dr Cameron since 2019.

We thank them for their service, dedication and commitment to our practice and patients in the time they’ve been with us, they will both be deeply missed by us all.

We are very pleased to let you know that we have successfully recruited a new GP to the practice, Dr Raman Rao will be joining us from April as a full time GP. Dr Rao comes with a wealth of experience and is very much looking forward to getting started at the practice and getting to know our practice team and patients.

We are also welcoming two of our longstanding practice team members to the practice partnership.

Juliet Sagar, Practice Manager and Tony Hewett, Practice Pharmacist will also be joining the practice partnership from April. Juliet has been with the practice since 2008 and Tony since 2016.

We wish all of our new partners every success in their new roles.

You may be aware through the press that measles cases are rising in the UK. Updated infection prevention control guidelines have been provided to practices which we have reviewed, as a result it is necessary for us to put a number of actions into place.

These actions are necessary to ensure we can protect our patients, some of whom are extremely vulnerable, our staff and visitors to the practice and to safely manage any identified cases of measles in our community.

Effective immediately:

• If you think you, or a family member, have been infected by measles, please DO NOT COME TO THE SURGERY. 
• Please telephone the practice in the first instance and give the reception team as much information as you can to give us the best chance of identifying whether you have measles.
• Symptoms of measles are a rash and feeling unwell (which may include cold-like symptoms or small white spots in the mouth) Further information from the NHS can be found here: Measles - NHS (www.nhs.uk)
• You will initially be booked for a triage telephone call with one of the clinical team.
• If the clinician requests that you visit the surgery you will be asked to wait in your car until a member of the team calls you into an isolation room.
• If you are unsure of your child’s measles vaccination status then please contact the practice for advice.

The number of people in Wales having the MMR vaccine has dropped since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. This means that children who have not been vaccinated, or are only partially vaccinated, are unprotected. This increases the risk of measles outbreaks happening in nurseries or schools.  

Even a small drop in the number of people having the MMR vaccination can lead to an increase in measles cases. As there is more international travel since COVID-19 restrictions were lifted, there is a higher chance of measles being brought back from countries where it is common.  

Having two doses of the MMR vaccine is the best way to protect you and your child from measles, mumps and rubella.  

You can find more information on the vaccine and diseases at Vaccinations - NHS (www.nhs.uk)