Your chance to comment on healthcare in Parkstone and Oakdale, Poole

Dr Lionel Cartwright and Dr Richard Holmes have been appointed to lead the transition arrangements for the continued development of GP commissioning in Poole and Bournemouth. Both have not only got many years of front line experience as family GP’s but also come with a good deal of experience at managing practice based commissioning and re designing clinical services. We wish them well and offer our support for what will be interesting and challenging times ahead.

Bournemouth and Poole PCT are  supporting the development of a transition team GP consortium with more than just kind words, a funding stream has been allocated to ensure capable and strong commissioning is able to develop .

GPs are all in discussion about the implications for us as eventual holders of real budgets. The Department of Health will be removing Strategic Health Authorities and Primary Care Trusts. We must however be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water. We will need some of  their expertise as we reconfigure healthcare in Poole. More than anything we need broader engagement with our community. But what sort of management systems will be needed to replace these institutions? I would argue that they need to be more responsive, patient focused and dynamic. What do you think ?

Welcome to the Parkstone locality’s ‘HaveYour Say’ blog

Healthstone is a federation of primary care practices  devoted to the improved quality and provision of services for patients across the Parkstone and Oakdale areas of Poole.

Healthstone ltd is a company formed in 2008 and started by the locality of Parkstone practices. This is a company vehicle that allows all the primary care practices in our area to work together to build a better and more responsive health care system .
The locality is sometimes referred to as a “cluster” or a “federation”in department of health speak . Healthstone however is better thought of as our health community HUB around which we as primary care teams hope to shape ,design and improve services to patients .
There are many challenges ahead as the health service goes through another complex reorganization . Patient care and quality service are the focus of our endeavors ,fortunately we have a vibrant community who share these aspirations for excellence and  who see and understand the benefits of team working and sharing ideas to build a better service.
We value input from you our patients and community , so you will be able to follow some of the health system changes on our web blog and chip in your own ideas using our  “have your say” section within our web .

As David Cameron often quotes “we are all in this together ” and as health care becomes ever more complex we need to strive to make our services easy to access, and personable but at the same time confident that we are achieving efficiency and quality assured systems that support the front line.

Contrary to popular myth there are many experienced and hard working managers in the NHS at all sorts of levels. It is very much our aspiration that we can “work together” as an integrated team with clinicians leading and supported by experienced help from management.
Since the early days of Healthstone it is hard to imagine how much progress has been made by us all collectively. We have harmonized all our IT systems so we can provide extended hours services as a group on Saturdays with a full day opening which is pre bookable . This was designed to help in particular people who have difficulty making appointments in the week. This has been a huge success and is a model for providing extended care across a larger population of patients where doctors can have all the up to date information they require.
Our why weight service which has been run across the locality has been very effective . This is a weight reduction service which includes one to one , group support e mail and maintenance support programs . These sorts of health promotion issues are very important and in particular we wish to hear from patients about ideas they have that might help promote healthier lifestyles.   presently we are working hard to get agreement to improve the care of our diabetic patients in the community.

As we look to the recent struggles that Obama has had in the states to get a more moral and inclusive healthcare system lets value the best that we already have and move forward with a real sense of aspiration and inclusivity.

jp