Several months ago Whitewater Health received a visit from our local MP, Mr Ranil Jayawardena.

Mr Jayawardena met with the GP Partners, Managers and the Chair of our Patient Participation Group at Whitewater Health to discuss capacity and access to medical appointments and patient expectations of the services of GP practices.

Mr Jayawardena agreed that Whitewater Health was performing well and felt assured our team ensured fair access to medical appointments across our facilities using the resources available to us.

Mr Jayawardena discussed the “Additional Roles” scheme. This allows practices to employ other Health Care Professionals to work alongside Doctors and Nurses as part of the Primary Care Team, offering a wide range of Healthcare Practitioners offering expert care for patients. Such new roles include:

Clinical Pharmacists, Paramedic Practitioners, Social Prescribers, Health and Wellbeing Coach, Physiotherapists (First Contact Practitioners).

He met with some of these colleagues individually - please see attached the videos of these conversations which explain the roles and what they can do to support our patients quickly and efficiently. By expanding our team in this way, we can also offer more GP capacity for those who need access to doctor-led care.

Please do watch these videos as our Reception Team will offer you appointments with these practitioners when appropriate. These roles will increase our appointment numbers by hundreds each week and are already proving to be a highly valuable resource to our service.

May we take this opportunity to thank Mr Jayawardena and his team for his support and to wish all of our patients a happy and healthy 2024.

Whitewater Health GP Partners and management team.