Staff News.. Dr Fellows is retiring after 25 years at The Wilson Practice

Dear Patients 

It is with great sadness that we would like to announce that Dr Andrew Fellows will be retiring on 14th February 2024 after 25 years at The Wilson Practice.  

Dr Fellows has contributed enormously to the smooth running of the surgery over the years, with the last 10 years of his Partnership career here as Managing Partner.  

He has worked tirelessly in his Partnership and Clinical roles, and as The Wilson Practice representative and a board member at the A31 PCN, as well as working as a Board Member at the North Hampshire CCG (now ICB). 

He also managed to find time to support out of hours GP services as a board member at North Hampshire Urgent Care and has trained numerous GP Trainees at the surgery since 2004, many of whom have gone on to work with us at the surgery.  

Dr Fellows has devoted his working life to ensuring that the best possible care was provided to Alton and North Hampshire, both through individual patient contact, and by shaping and influencing the provision of services locally.

We at The Wilson Practice feel privileged to have worked with Dr Fellows, and to have been able to learn from his vast wealth of accumulated knowledge.

 He has been a steadfast, compassionate and kind colleague and an inspirational leader, both in the surgery and within the community. We as his colleagues will miss him very much and we know many of you will feel the same. 

 We would like to take this opportunity to wish Dr Fellows a wonderful, healthy and relaxing retirement. 

Our greatest Achievements 2023

Covid and flu vaccines: 
The majority of covid and flu vaccines were delivered in joint clinics from The Wilson Practice. There were many challenges in the organisation of these clinics, with delivery dates being provided 48hrs before clinics starting, and computer log ins provided the day before! However, our team worked together brilliantly to provide a convenient and efficient clinic for our patients. We apologise for the number of messages and initial confusion while the guidance regarding dates for administration were changed repeatedly prior to the start  of our team who made this programme such a success. So far we have administered 5211 Covid Autumn Boosters, and 7351 flu vaccines! There is still time to have your vaccines if you haven't yet booked in.

•The New Practice Web site:
 This is constantly being updated to list the Doctors, Nurses and other staff for your information.  We also have an online ‘Register with a GP’ service making it easier for new patients to sign up. 
https://www.wilsonpractice.nhs.uk
Self Care Fair:
In November our PCN (Primary Care Network) held a very successful Self Care Fair at the Alton Sports Centre organised by the Social Prescribing team.  Many local people attended and there were a wide range of organisations that provide complimentary services present to talk to all those that visited.

•Collaborative working within our PCN: We have many services for our patients which are provided by our PCN (Primary Care Network) The A31, which consists of The Wilson Practice, Chawton Park Surgery and Boundaries Surgery.  We have an in-house Physiotherapy team, a fantastic Social Prescriber Team, Cancer Care Champion, Paediatric MDT (Multi Disciplinary Team- includes hospital Consultants and our GPs), Proactive Care Team, Pharmacists, Care Coordinators, Child and Young person mental health team, Adult Mental Health team, GP Assistants to name but a few! The PCN are working on a New website in order to showcase all these services to whom you may be referred to.

Coming soon 2024.....

•January 8th
2024: Total Triage GO LIVE!

What is Total Triage

Total Triage means you will be asked to contact the surgery by eConsult for all your admin and clinical queries.  The Doctor will review all clinical eConsults and patients will be  allocated to the most appropriate service. This may be a Doctor, The Triage Team,  Physiotherapist or other community services.  We will continue to operate an on the day service.

FAQs

What if I do not have access to a computer or cannot complete the form myself?

You may ask a friend or relative to help you.  If his is not possible, you may call  the surgery- our staff will ask you the questions in an ‘eConsult lite’, which will provide enough information for the clinical staff to review. The answers will then filter through the same channel and be managed accordingly.

I do not like the eConsult form and find it time-consuming

Whilst we have eConsult commissioned by our Integrated Care Board (ICB) We have listened to this feedback and tried several other products on the market.  Currently we have not found a product that satisfies both patient ease at completing the form versus clinical safety and ‘red flag’ alerting.  Therefore we will continue to research but for now we will move forwards with eConsult.  We do feedback directly to eConsult with your comments and whilst we appreciate this will not satisfy all, we hope that you will find great care and timely responses to your requests

I do not want anyone to see my information other than my doctor

Our Reception team do need to ask basic questions for the request to filter into the eConsult clinical triage system, and to ensure that each query is allocated to the correct clinician.   We would like to assure you that all staff are trained in data protection and confidentiality. 

Are the opening hours going to change?

YES! eConsult will be our main method of communication.  The initial opening times for eConsult from 8th January will be 06:30am- 12 noon.  Our phone lines and building will remain open from 08:00am-18:30pm.  We hope that opening up the access to eConsult will be more convenient for our patients and ease our phone lines creating a much quicker answering time. We will be monitoring the opening hours and hope to extend these however we are integrating into  a new way of working so please bear with us.