Can you free up urgently needed GP appointments? Did you know you could contact your Pharmacist in the first instance? They can give you advice on a range of conditions and suggest medicines that can help. They may also be able to offer treatment and prescription medicines for some conditions through the Pharmacy First scheme, without you needing to see a GP.

Find the report online at https://www.cqc.org.uk/location/1-559846295.

Not that it tells you a lot!

But why does this take almost 6 months?

As I understand it the contract for supply & maintenance of the old website (which was common across all the practices in Ealing) expired at the end of March and wasn’t being renewed centrally; a decision that was made in January! It would have been too expensive for the Practice to continue to contract this alone.

The new design has been contracted by our Primary Care Network (the Northolt, Greenford & Perivale PCN; NGP PCN). Due to the short notice it has been created in a hurry, and I was told a couple of weeks ago that initially it would not be fully developed; the essentials are there but some sections (eg. for Barnabas Patient Voices) are little more than stubs.

I should have a meeting this week with the Practice Manager, so I’ll try to find out more. Watch this space.

If you click on SPEAK an extra toolbar is displayed. Click the left-most icon (a hand/finger) then click anywhere on the screen, and you will have the text read aloud to you starting at this point.

You can tailor the facility, at least in a small way. As always the options are hidden behind the cogwheel.