1. Comments & Suggestions
The Beacon Health Group
Newsletter Addition 5
THANK YOU!
Cyber Attack
The Beacon Health Group would like to thank all our patients for their patience and understanding during the recent cyber attack. We were effected throughout Monday and Tuesday and unfortunately Broomfield Hospital was also affected, causing us to cancel our phlebotomy clinic for that week. Our sincere apologies for this but sadly their laboratories were unable to do testing.
The cyber attack allowed us to put our contiguously plan into place and although it was a learning curve for all we are very proud of all our staff at The Beacon Health Group.
Comments & Suggestions
Please could patients remember to switch their mobile phones to silent whilst in the surgery for the comfort of all our patients.
Summer Months
Unfortunately, we do not own the building and are therefore not in
the position to install air conditioning into the waiting rooms.
We have investigated the possibility of purchasing fans but due to infection control and health and safety guidelines we are unable to do so . During the summer months we will endeavour to change the layout of the waiting room chairs to avoid as much direct sunlight through the windows as possible.

2. Beaulieu Park Development NOMINATE YOUR LOCAL PHARMACY!
As you may already be aware, the development at Beaulieu Park includes a new health facility to provide primary care services to local residents. 
Mid Essex Clinical Commissioning Group along with NHS England are currently considering a number of options which include the opportunity for local practices to provide primary healthcare services from this new health facility.  
The Beacon Health Group has produced a business case to relocate our existing Mountbatten House surgery into the new purpose built premises.  This would seem a sensible solution to eradicate the continuous problems we face working at our current site, highlighted by all stakeholders.  
As the nearest practice to the new surgery it would cause the least disruption to patients and would certainly benefit our every increasing list size.  
Our Patient Participation Group fully supports this relocation and sees it as a positive move forward for our Springfield patients.   
Please visit our website - where we are asking for patient feedback to support our application. Please visit our site and fill out the survey. Your participation is very much appreciated.
NOMINATE YOUR LOCAL PHARMACY!
The Electronic Prescription Service (EPS)
If you get regular prescriptions the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) may be of benefit to you by saving you unnecessary trips to your GP.
EPS makes it possible for your prescriptions to be sent electronically to the pharmacy or dispenser of your choice.
Choosing a pharmacy or dispensing appliance contractor to process your EPS prescription is called nomination. This means, you will no longer have to collect a paper repeat prescription from your GP practice and instead you can go straight to the nominated pharmacy. However this does not include controlled drug items. These will still need to be collected from the surgery.
We also encourage our patients to use our online ordering of
prescriptions via SystmOne online.
Please speak to our dispensary for more information.

3. Patient Participant Group
In the last few months patients from Danbury have become
involved in the Patient Participation Group (PPG), as a result of
the amalgamation of the Mountbatten House Surgery and the
Danbury Medical Centre now known as the Beacon Health Group (BHG).
The main purpose of the group is to improve communication between
patients and the practice (BHG) and the community it serves. At a meeting
of the group on 2nd May I was elected as your chair.
This is an ideal opportunity to start afresh, there is a lot happening in the world of the NHS, particularly in the area of Self Help. Since I had cancer in 2000, I have learnt a lot about the NHS from the volunteering jobs I have undertaken. Initially I started a Cancer Services User Group; this was in an effort to improve the Cancer journey, many improvements have been made as a result of this forum. I am chair of a Stoma support group; which is a valuable resource for people with a stoma for whatever reason. For the last few years I have been Vice Chair of the Patient Council at Broomfield Hospital, added to this I am the Ambassador for Broomfield patient interests in the Mid and South Essex Success Regime. This is about the amalgamation of the three hospitals namely Basildon, Broomfield and Southend. Added to this I am on the Board responsible for the procurement of Integrated Urgent Care, that is what is currently NHS111 and out of hours service, which will become a single service rather than two entities.
You may have heard of the term Community Hub, this is an initiative emanating from the NHS. The role of community Hubs is to:
Provide ‘out of hospital’ places from which joined up care will be delivered.
Service the needs of children and adults.
Support the integration and delivery of mental health, physical health and social care to meet whole needs of people (whole person care).
Offer urgent, planned and bedded care to complement services provided at home and in hospitals – delivering the right care, in the right setting, by the right people.
Meet the specific need of local communities; not one size will fit all. Recognise that different communities will start with different services and facilities (including primary care).
Potentially be delivered from a combination of the most appropriate physical locations to balance access and resilience needs.
Take account of housing developments and new facilities.
Consider how technology can support new approaches to care delivery.
This is one of the areas which needs our best efforts to establish and will be one of my main objective for the new beginning of the Beacon Health Participation Group.
The initial thrust will be on SELF CARE.
Continued… 

4. …
 One thing that you can do as a patient is to ensure that your repeat prescriptions are ordered either online and by nominating your chosen chemist so that they can automatically be sent to your dispensing chemist for you to collect. This will give the prescribing teams more time to provide you with a better service both at Danbury and Mountbatten House.
We will be setting up a PPG corner in both surgeries with useful current information as well as our contact details. We also aim to have a regular page in the practice news to keep you up to date with our plans.
The PPG is not a forum for complaints or personal issues; it is primarily about communication, improving the way things are done and making us all aware of new legislation and innovations.
Paul Foulger
Chair
Beacon Health Patient Participation Group
May 2017