Michelle Phillips, Chief nurse at primary care services provider Nimbuscare, says in this week's column that GP practices across the country are struggling with high demand, increasing staff sickness, shortages of staff - just as the peak holiday period arrives.

 

"GP Practices in York were once again in the news last week due to the length of time people are having to wait for a routine appointment. It’s incredibly difficult for everyone working within General Practice, to hear the frustrations of local people.

Every GP practice in the country is dealing with the same issues – high demand, increasing staff sickness and shortage of both clinical and non-clinical staff. In addition, we’re now entering the peak holiday period and still have high levels of Covid in our communities.

As a community, York has been doing all it can to urge more to be done to invest in the future of General Practice. Nimbuscare’s chair Prof Mike Holmes has represented us by giving evidence to the Government’s Select Committee and has spoken out on this issue for some time.

At Nimbuscare we’re listening to all the York GP Practices and working to support them by planning services at scale which can take the pressure of their day to day activities. For example, our Autumn Covid and Flu vaccination programme at our Askham Bar Community Care Centre, will free up GP practice teams during the busy winter months.

We continue to progress with opening up new services in York and I can reveal we will be opening up a new NHS fertility service at our Acomb Community Care Centre. This will help those people who have previously had to travel to Leeds or Hull for IVF investigations or other fertility support.

The first consultations for York people needing NHS fertility support will be held in August and people will be referred by their GP. This is great news for York people and will also be an opportunity for our teams to learn about this important service. We will provide more information about this exciting new service later this week.

We’re also recruiting a number of new posts to work within Nimbuscare, so would urge anyone who wants to work for our award winning team, to keep an eye on our nimbuscare.co.uk recruitment page."