At a packed and anxious meeting of over 300 people at Hampton's White House Community Centre, local health chiefs unveiled a rescue plan for the 1700 residents who have been de-registered by the main Hampton practice - the Hampton Medical Centre (HMC).

Dr Dhalla in Broad Lane will take on 1000 of the patients and is trying to recruit an extra doctor to cope with the workload; 700 others, who are currently receiving treatment at HMC, or have members of the family registered there, will remain at HMC.

Local MP, Vincent Cable, who attended the public meetings in Hampton and met local health chiefs last week to try to find a satisfactory solution, said that "a disaster has been narrowly averted".

Dr Cable continued: "Dr Dhalla is a highly regarded and local GP. But the way this whole episode has been handled beggars belief. Residents cannot understand how local doctors can be allowed to throw hundreds of patients off their register, causing alarm and anxiety, while the authorities then work out what to do about it.

"There is also continuing annoyance that residents are being left with little choice but are being presented with a fait accompli."

Whilst the meeting on Monday night assuaged some concerns, with Dr Dhalla's surgery set to expand to accommodate the new patients, it still raised a number of very worrying issues about capacity at the other surgeries, said Paul Maynard, the Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate, who also attended the public meeting.

"There seems to be a clear discrepancy between the PCT's claims that all surgeries, bar the Hampton Hill Medical Centre, still have open lists, and the experience of local residents ringing up and finding that the lists at these surgeries are full," he commented. "This is something that residents in Hampton are especially concerned about, and I am sure it won't be long before we have a similar situation elsewhere in the borough."

See our earlier article Residents up in arms at surgery closure

Tuesday, June 29, 2004

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