The PPG has released their first newsletter

December 2022

Chair’s message

I am Linda Grant, the chair of the Priory Gardens Surgery Patient Participation Group (PPG).

The PPG are a group of the practices patients who work with staff at the surgery and interact with other patients to help give feedback on services between staff and patients. We are all volunteers.

The PPG are committed to working with our Surgery to give the best possible care to our Patients. We have just assisted with the Flu clinic and we hope to visit other clinics in the surgery to meet with our patients.

If you have any ideas how we can help patients or the surgery please do not hesitate to contact us as we are always looking to improve. It is your PPG.

Any information given to us will be strictlyconﬁdential. We hope to deliver these Newsletters 3 to 4 times a year.

Season’s Greetings!

Linda Grant

Grove View Integrated Health and Care Hub

Some patients may be aware that a new Health and Care Hub has been in development in Dunstable. We are delighted that it will be the new location for Priory Gardens Surgery and on Monday 3rd April 2023, we will begindelivering your primary care services from our new surgery at the hub.

Full details will be shared with patients in a letter that will be sent in January 2023, together with details of drop-in events that we will hold at the current Priory Gardens Surgery, to answer any questions you may have.

For now, we would like to explain how the hub has developed and what our patients can expect from this new facility.

The story so far

In Spring 2019, Bedfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) conducted a public consultation to understand patients’ views ahead of the plans for an Integrated Health and Care Hub being developed in Dunstable.

A timelapse camera was installed to show the progress of the construction up to August 2022

This video contains images depicting the building of the new hub. There is no textual context and any audio is a soundtrack for the imagary.

The feedback from the consultation was used in the development of the plans for the hub. The hub, recently named Grove View Integrated Health and Care Hub is a joint project, led by Central Bedfordshire Council. Planning approval was granted in 2020 and work started on the new £43 million, four-storey, integrated health and care hub in August 2021. In April 2022 the highest point of the new hub was completed and a traditional topping out ceremony was held.

What can our patients expect at the new Hub?

When we move to the Grove View Hub, Priory Gardens patients will beneﬁt from receiving care in a brand new state of the art building.

We will have 17 consulting and treatment rooms and 5 quiet workspaces for digital consultations. Multiple waiting room areas will provide comfortable space for patients, whilst waiting to be seen. The additional consulting room space together with new ofﬁce space for staff, will make it possible for us to offer more appointments with our growing primary care team.

The same dedicated Priory Gardens team will deliver your services from the new building. There is also dedicated consulting space for clinicians that work across all practices in our area, known as the Primary Care Network, to deliver care from the hub.

The development includes 171 parking bays for patients visiting the hub including 14 disabled parking bays. This is in addition to staff parking and there is extra visitor parking in the Go Bowling car park adjacent to the hub.

Fly-through Video

Get a feel for how the integrated health and care hub will look when it’s complete

This video contains images depicting the new hub. There is no textual context and the audio only a soundtrack for the imagary.

Wider Health Services

In addition, the Integrated Health and Care Hub will transform the way care is delivered to beneﬁt people’s health and wellbeing by bringing together a mix of health and care professionals promoting more joined-up working to deliver primary health care, mental health and social care services. It will also provide space for community and voluntary organisations to come together to deliver their services for the local community.

NHS App

The new, simple and secure way to access a range of NHS services on your smartphone or tablet.

FIND OUT MORE

Image of the NHS App

New phone system in place

The new system has now been up and running since September and is working well.

The new options are:

Care navigators for appointments and main help line
Voice mail for cancellations, this is checked every 30 minutes
Prescription clerk
Surgery secretaries for referral, records and other queries

If you are more than 10th in the queue you will be offered a call back option and your place in the queue will be held. The system shows staff how many people are waiting and also waiting for a call back. The maximum in the queue is currently 60, which can be adjusted as needed. If you miss the call you will need to call again.