Fort House Surgery has submitted a Planning Application that proposes to increase our patient list size from 13,500 to 16,500 patients.
The current cap on our patient list size was placed on the Fort House Surgery when we moved to this site several years ago. It is unique and no other medical practice in the area has a cap on the number of patients they can accept, and this limits the extent to which we can serve the community
We therefore want to increase this list size for several reasons:
- Community Needs: the population of Elmbridge is growing and so are the demands of the existing community. With a greater emphasis on primary care, there is every reason to support better service provision at the local level, which allows a more joined up approach to the services that people need.
- Fort House Brand of Care: We are proud of the service and care we offer our patients. We would like to be able to offer this to more patients in Elmbridge. By having a number of GPs and other health service professionals and support staff under one roof, we are able to offer a more balanced range of services and support investment in technology enabling more effective and timely health services.
- Viability of Service Provision: For us to be able to continue to develop the new services and standards expected and foster greater links with the community, we need to increase the patient list to meet demand and support services. Each GP practice gets paid per patient on their list and this is therefore crucial to the quality of services the practice can offer. Without approval to increase our list size, we would not be able to offer the services our patients expect and could result in us having to reduce or withdraw some of the additional services we currently offer.
While we know the past issues of parking have been a concern, we extended parking in previous proposals and have adopted a wide range of measures that have successfully managed previous parking pressures.
We believe we have demonstrated how parking has worked effectively with some spare capacity and by introducing innovative uses of technology, staggered appointments, virtual consultations and other measures. This application does not involve any additional building work on site, and we would accept new patients under the same premise as before via controlled numbers on a weekly or monthly basis.
It is also relevant to note that new patients are able to register at one of the surgeries at the Health Centre and park in the same car park without the same restriction.
We would hope that you are able to support our application and would be happy to talk through any queries you may have.
Fort House Surgery Partnership and Management team