Who We Are...
We have one Health Centre in Kings
Lynn (16500 patients) and another at
Dersingham (6000 patients) which is next to
Royal Sandringham .We have an NHS surgical
unit and two non NHS businesses one in
occupational health and also a skin and
laser clinic. Our
activities all operate under the Vida
Healthcare banner which is a Partnership
comprising of 11 Partners (10 doctors and
the Managing Partner).
We believe we are a well organised,
paperless practice with an emphasis on
quality, teamwork and equity of work. Our
NHS team consists of about 40 people in the
general areas of patient services, admin and
IT; 20 in the nursing team and 15 doctors.
The staff at the Practice sees over 11,000
patients every month. We also have community
staff based at both sites and other health
professionals hold regular clinics in the
surgeries. We have been recognised as
Investors in People since 1995.
As a first wave Personal Medical Services
(PMS) practice, we have aligned personal
development with practice planning and
clinical governance to create about 20 multi
disciplinary clinical teams covering all
aspects of acute and chronic disease
management. We have a weekly educational
meeting, morning and afternoon meet up
breaks for all doctors and nurses and a
commitment to personal development for all
the team.
The business structure of the practice
supports this concept with partner business
meetings separate from a “patient care
group” which oversees the work of the
clinical teams and includes patients,
nursing and management colleagues. Our
computer system allows us to identify
teaching and learning opportunities. We have
not used paper records since March 1999 and
since 1988 a lot of information has been
held in electronic form. Our current system
is EMIS PCS and electronic document
management is undertaken through Docman.
It’s obviously fully networked, we have a
supporting intranet and there is instant
internet access for all. This information
structure supports the important areas in
our clinical governance framework such as
complaints, significant events and the
national Quality and Outcomes Framework
(QOF).
Our practice population spans the complete
social spectrum from the deprived areas of
North Lynn to the country piles of the
landed gentry. We have quite a lot of under
16’s and also a fairly high proportion of
elderly patients (particularly at
Dersingham).
Our chronic care clinics, covering areas
such as diabetes, respiratory and CHD, aim
to provide optimal care based on National
Service Framework guidance. We have achieved
maximum or virtually maximum QOF points
every year since its inception in April
2004. We are currently undertaking the RCGP
Quality Practice Award as a further measure
of our standards of care. Our elderly care
team specialises in anticipatory care for
the elderly. We provide a special clinic
here in conjunction with the Community
Alcohol and Drugs Service to ensure the
practice’s drug addicts receive organised
medical care.
There is also the opportunity to see general
surgery in a primary care setting. We are
part of Norfolk Surgical and Diagnostic
Centres which is a group of three Practices
in Kings Lynn which for almost 20 years have
been providing treatments in primary care
that were previously carried out in
secondary care. At our centre we undertake
cystoscopy in partnership with the main
acute hospital and we undertake small
incision cataract surgery, having completed
over 3000 cases since 1995. The other units
provide general surgery including hernia
repair, orthopaedic surgery, gastroscopy,
sigmoidoscopy and colonoscopy.
We own a separate occupational health
company with offices in King’s Lynn and
Norwich, which gives another area of
interest. We can also demonstrate the
benefit of a specialist travel clinic lead
by one of our partners. We are involved in
Practice Based Commissioning and our team
acts as the referral management centre for
all orthopaedic referrals in the area. We
have a specialist private skin and laser
clinic providing a wide range of cosmetic
treatments. We have three lasers for a
variety of procedures and the clinic
currently opens for three days a week in
Kings Lynn.
A very important aspect of our work is
helping patients who come to the surgeries
and those who telephone us. This work is
undertaken by members of the Patient
Solutions Team (PST). There is a separate
reception team at each site each supervised
by a Team Leader. Each
team deals with patients coming to the
surgery and all phone calls go through the
PST which is based at Kings Lynn. This team
will handle at least five calls a minute in
the first part of every day and take about
9000 – 10,000 calls each month from
patients. There are admin and secretarial
staff working alongside this team. We
provide an extended hours service until 8pm
three evening a week, an early morning from
7.15 once a week and Saturday opening every
week from 8.30 – 11.30, This is in addition
to our normal times of 8 – 6.30 pm.
We employ many nurses, several with
prescribing rights, who provide acute and
chronic care. We have numerous practice
nurses who are encouraged to specialise and
they run the chronic care clinics. Other
nurses provide a treatment room services and
clinical nursing assistants offer phlebotomy
and other tests. There is a full time
primary mental health care worker attached
to the practice. District nurses,
physiotherapists, podiatrists and health
visitors are based at both Centres and
others e.g. midwife and dietician visit
regularly. We have a dispensary at our
Dersingham surgery.
We are very conscious of our responsibility
as a large primary care provider to support
the involvement of general practice in the
development of GP’s and realise that the new
approach being pioneered by universities
such as the U.E.A. is crucial to the
survival of general practice in the U.K. We
have been approved as a training practice by
the UEA for medical students and a group of
about 12 undergraduate students have been
coming here for training once a week from
September 2003. We started taking F2 doctors
in the autumn of 2007 and hope to expand our
training involvement by taking GP registrars
as we were approved for that late in 2007. A
new education centre was built at the Gayton
Road site at the end of 2007 and the new
Dersingham surgery has a very large training
room.
We are keen to involve patients in the
development of services and have two active
patient participation groups. Communications
with them and public relation in general are
an important aspect of the work in this
role.