THE PERMANENT CLOSURE OF HIGH BICKINGTON BRANCH SURGERY ON 2ND AUGUST 2024
Dear Patient,
We are writing to provide an important update to our patients in High Bickington.
High Bickington is a branch surgery site of Torrington Health Centre. It is currently operated as a single-handed GP practice for three mornings per week. People who require a face-to-face GP appointment at other times of the week, or who require practice nurse services or those of the wider practice team, must make an appointment and travel to Torrington Health Centre.
Over the past year, continuing to provide primary care services from the High Bickington Branch has become more difficult. There are three main reasons for this difficulty: we struggle to provide the staff for the site, infection control concerns at the site, and we are focusing on national changes to the way GP practices should be running, which recommends the increased use of remote consultations, for example telephone or video appointments.
Earlier this year, we asked patients and our local partners in the community to help us understand the impact of the temporary closure at High Bickington branch surgery and then opening with reduced services in 2021. Thank you everyone who took part in the survey and shared their views, it was extremely helpful for us.
The main concerns raised in this feedback were:
Access for vulnerable groups
We recognise that for some people who do not have access to a vehicle they may be find it difficult to access the main site at Torrington. This is an issue experienced in rural communities across the UK. There is now more choice for access to GP services with telephone and video consultations, online consultations and the availability of extended opening times such as evenings and weekends. The opening hours at High Bickington are currently 0830 to 1000hrs three mornings per week and due to lack of staff, we are not able to change or increase this in the future. It has become very difficult to maintain existing services at High Bickington. It has not been possible to attract and recruit medical staff who are willing to work away from the main site which features a multi-disciplinary team, that is fully equipped and housed in purpose-built facilities.
Like patients from other surrounding villages in our practice area, those who need face-to-face appointments will drive, use public transport, rely on family and friends, or use one of the community transport schemes that are available locally.
Environmental impact
We know that getting to Torrington is much less convenient for some, compared to walking the High Bickington branch for those patients who live within walking distance. It is not economically, or environmentally sustainable to maintain a branch surgery for exclusive use for patients within walking distance of a rural surgery. The number of patients that were seen at the High Bickington branch in the 6 months prior to February 2024 represents just over 10 additional patient journeys per week. While this does mean some increased vehicle use, it is relatively small and is offset by not needing to heat, light and maintain the branch surgery building which is only used for 4.5 hours each week. Our increased use of telephone and online consultations when clinically appropriate means there is much less need for unnecessary travel.
Home-visiting
We will continue to provide home visits to registered patients in High Bickington when needed Community nursing support will continue in the High Bickington area, and patients already on the community nursing housebound caseload will continue to receive ongoing care at home.
We shared the feedback we collected from patients during our engagement with the organisation responsible for commissioning (planning, paying for, and monitoring) general practice in Devon – NHS Devon. Following a careful review, we applied to NHS Devon to permanently close High Bickington Surgery and our application was approved. Therefore, High Bickington Surgery will close permanently on 2nd August 2024.
By focusing our services and resources on our Torrington Health Centre site, we were able to expand the range of clinicians who patients can see. Our multidisciplinary team are based at our larger premises in Torrington where the facilities are better and there is additional support on hand from other healthcare colleagues. We have improved access to appointments by using technology to increase the number of remote consultations (e.g., online and telephone consultations). By increasing the number of remote consultations, we were able to increase our face-to-face capacity for those people who really need to be seen.
Patients living in High Bickington will continue to be able to access a wide range of primary care services (doctors, advanced nurse practitioners, nurses, allied health professionals, paramedics, and pharmacists) at Torrington Health Centre.
We will not be asking any patients currently registered with us to leave. If you would like to remain a patient at Torrington Health Centre, you do not need to take any action, and you will not be removed from our list.
Patients do however have a choice over where they are registered and currently High Bickington also lies within the catchment area of Litchdon Surgery in Barnstaple.
We know that some patients will miss the convenience of the location of the High Bickington branch surgery, and we are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause but offering access to a wider range of medical services at the larger main site is paramount to safe and effective clinical practice.
Yours sincerely
Dr Mogge, Dr Burton and Dr Amerasinghe
GP Partners at Torrington Health Centre
