Boost for GPs' surgeries

PATIENTS in GP surgeries will benefit from £112,379 worth of new equipment thanks to a League of Friends initiative and a widow's bequest.

The idea of inviting the town's family doctors to submit bids to the league for new equipment was the brainchild of the chairman of the League of Friends of Bexhill Hospital, Peter Mitchell-Davis.

The aim of the one-off offer was to fulfil the league's mission to serve the patients of Bexhill through ensuring that every surgery had the latest equipment.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Doctors are now required under a new national initiative designed to bring health care closer to the patients, to undertake in their surgeries a wide range of minor procedures previously undertaken in hospitals.

The result of the League's initiative was a catalogue of needs - from pulse oximeters to measure oxygen saturation levels in the blood, doppler examination probes, electrocautery and cryotherapy equipment to spirometers for asthma testing, heart defibrillators, ophthalmoscopes for eye examination and variable-height examination couches.

The list, originally topping 140,000, came before the league's general committee at its October meeting. Because members had not had time to study the six-and-a-half page document it was decided to defer consideration until the December meeting. By that time Dr Roger Elias and Partners had withdrawn bids totalling more than 16,470 pending a decision on redevelopment of the Sea Road surgery.

At last Thursday's December meeting the general committee approved:

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

*1,974 worth of equipment for Dr Dewhurst and Partners' Old Town surgery

*2,459 worth for Dr Dewhurst and Partners' Little Common surgery

*17,856 worth for Dr Elias and Partners' Pebsham surgery

*2,215 for Dr Elias and Partners' Sea Road surgery

*51,557 for Dr Lawton and Partners' Albert Road and Sidley surgeries

*20,074 for Dr Warden and Partners' surgeries

The league had also received bids totalling 14,360 from Dr Lawton and Partners for their planned new Sidley surgery.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The meeting voted to ring-fence this money and to invite the practice to re-submit its bid once the proposed re-build of the Turkey Road surgery is nearing completion.

League committee members had been delighted to learn that under the will of the late Gwyneth Turner the charity will receive a 100,000 bequest.

The meeting voted unanimously to dedicate the charity's gift to the town's doctors in her memory.

At the end of protracted and complex debate during which the committee had gone through the requests item by item before approving all of them, the chairman said he believed that, through Mrs Turner, the charity had achieved something that would be of immediate benefit to the patients of Bexhill.