ASPIRE MEDICAL PRACTICES (BOUNDARY CHANGES):
July, Aug & Sept 2023: We are continuing our engagements with Kings Family Practice stakeholders.
Our new email address for any enquiries or feedback is as below:
aspire.areaenquires@nhs.net
During this process, we will continue to interact with patients and respective stakeholder. We will continue to update Practice websites as we continue with the engagements. We aim to respond to queries/feedback within 72 hours.
July 2023: Text messages were sent to all patients about the update on the website. Below are two questions that came from patient engagement:
Can you confirm that existing patients will not be impacted?
All currently registered patients will continue to use our services. There will be no change in currently registered patients.
Patients requested the practice to send additional text messages once information and maps had been updated in the websites.
This action was completed, and texts sent in July 2023
July 2023: We have communicated with all stakeholders as a part of this engagement. These stakeholders are:
- General Practices in Medway and Swale
- All Councillors by Ward for Medway
- All Councillors by Ward for Swale
- All Parish Councils for Medway
- All Parish Councils for Swale
- The Parish Council (Stroud)
- Kent Healthwatch
- Medway Healthwatch
- Medway Council (Press Office)
- Medway Community Health
- Kent Community Health Foundation trust (KCHFT)
- Medway Hospital
- MPs for Medway and Swale
- Primary Care Networks (PCNs): Strood PCN, Medway Central PCN and Sittingbourne PCN
July 2023: We are continuing our engagements with Kings Family Practice stakeholders.
Our new email address for any enquiries or feedback is as below:
aspire.areaenquires@nhs.net
During this process, we will continue to interact with patients and respective stakeholder. We will continue to update Practice websites as we continue with the engagements. We aim to respond to queries/feedback within 72 hours.
June 2023: The suggested change for Kings Family Practice is depicted in the map below:
Kings Family Practice boundary will now cover the rural areas (dark blue line)
June 2023: Patient Participation Group (PPG) Meetings were held where the proposed boundary change was discussed, and views were canvassed.
June 2023: Text messages were sent to all patients informing them of this change.
June 2023: We are continuing the process of applying to extend the Practice Boundary for Kings Family Practice. You will hopefully recall us reaching out earlier this year regarding this, however if this is the first time that this has come to your attention, the reasons for this are two-fold:
- To help enhance and improve both access and choice of primary care provision for the local community.
- To allow greater synergy, collaboration, and coordination of care for patients with neighbouring practices and providers
March 2023 - June 2023: We applied for Kings Family Practice’s boundary to be extended to Medway and Swale. And we started the engagements with practice patients and stakeholders. Patient and stakeholder queries were responded to and also published in Kings Family Website as Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs).
May 2023
We are continuing our engagements with all our stakeholders and have shared our email address with them in our prior engagements to ensure they can raise any queries or concerns.
We would like to continue this dialogue with the stakeholders, therefore we have continued correspondence with them through our mailbox aspire.areaenquires@nhs.net
April 2023
We have engaged with Medway Healthwatch (Phill) and our local councillors (Mr Maple, Mr Mahil and Cllr Adeoye). We are very grateful for all their support and we will continue to engage with them as well as all other stakeholders who wish to discuss anything regarding the extension of our practice boundary.
April 2023
As a part of this process, we have corresponded with a wide range of stakeholders including our patients, neighbouring practices, councillors, and parish councils.
We have collated following frequently asked questions for our stakeholders as below:
1. Is the Practice’s intention to increase the patient list size through changing of the practice boundary?
We anticipate a marginal rise in new patient registrations as a direct result of expanding our Practice Boundary. This is because:
- Patients tend to register exclusively with their most local practices.
- Kings Family Practice has no intention of advertising or marketing its services for new patients.
- The rural population in the ‘added’ boundary are welcome to register at our Practice (where they feel they do not currently get access to consistent GP Practice services, the number expected to increase is marginal in this case.
Our aim is to eventually reach a stage of utilising our resources across the practices we manage to improve patient services because of a better joined up approach to healthcare in Kent and Medway by increasing access for our patients, reducing health inequalities, and allowing more collaboration and integration with other health services such as surgeries or primary care networks to help improve services and staffing arrangements.
2. How will patients contact the practice (after the boundary change)?
We do not anticipate anything to change for our patients. Patients will continue to contact the practice using the same methods.
3. Will our patients be expected to travel to other sites for services (after the boundary change)?
Our patients will continue to see the Health Care professionals at their own site. However, this will assist with professionals from any site to be able to call patients for a better and faster service (in due course).
4. Will the practice be stretched beyond capacity with this change?
Rest assured; we do not expect the practice to be overstretched because of this change. Instead, over time we expect services to be better aligned with other local services in the area to help reduce patient inconvenience with having to re-register elsewhere only on the merit of local migration. This will allow better flexibility for patients who visit their relatives in the area.
5. How will home visits be covered?
Since it is not our aim to increase the list size, we do not anticipate patients requiring home visits from a longer distance to register with us. Our current home visiting arrangements will continue through the same process.
6. I have questions regarding the practice boundary change, who may I contact?
Please email us on: aspire.areaenquires@nhs.net. We aim to respond within 72 hours. We aim to continuously update the frequently asked questions in the website as we continue with the engagements with our stakeholders.
March 2023
Kings Family Practice is a part of a larger group of Practices providing patient services to our patients in Kent & Medway. The other two practices currently are Marlowe Park Medical Centre and St Werburgh Medical Practice. Aspire Medical Health have a vision to provide excellent services to all registered patients which will be facilitated by our teams works closely together to improve our service. Expanding the Practice catchment area to encompass all of Medway and Swale will allow provision of a more integrated service for all our patients. We are currently in the initial stages, we will continue to update our website at each stage of this process.
If you have any queries or concerns, please email us on aspire.areaenquires@nhs.net. We aim to respond to all emails within 72 hours.