Viva Lewes Issue #138 March 2018

HEALTH
Lewes 'Super-surgery'
A riverside health campus by 2020
By the early 2020s,
all going to plan,
Lewes will have a
new ‘Super-surgery’,
which promises to
offer more wideranging
services and
improved efficiencies,
and will replace the
three existing surgeries,
whilst Ringmer
surgery remains.
I'm invited to St
Andrew's Surgery to talk to Dr Jason Heath, a
partner and GP there, who is one of the movers
behind the new plans. St Andrew's is one of the
three practices involved in what is much more
than just a merger, along with School Hill Medical
Practice and River Lodge Surgery.
The site proposed is directly opposite the river
from Tesco, where a number of warehouses from
the old Phoenix industrial site currently stand,
awaiting demolition before the Santon and Lewes
District Council development – of which this will
be part – is constructed. The plan includes underground
parking. The practice itself along with
other new buildings will be built from first-floor
height up, making it safe from flooding. The surrounding
transport infrastructure will be improved
to ease access to and from the site for both car and
public transport users.
More than just a merger? "We hope this will be a
state-of-the-art centre," says Dr Heath, "providing
a much wider access to health and social care
than the existing surgeries can. It’ll offer a broad
spectrum of services to cater for both physical and
mental health problems, and enable other key services
such as district nursing, midwifery, counselling,
audiology, physiotherapy etc to be located on
the same campus. Being in one place will improve
delivery of care and
serve what is a growing
population into
the next generation."
The 'hub' is also keen
to maintain links with
the Victoria Hospital,
with plans to open
a GP-staffed urgent
treatment unit.
One reason for the
modernisation is to
alleviate what Dr
Heath calls the 'GP bottleneck' whereby patients
see the GP first, even if there is someone else
better placed to help them: to this end Lewes
receptionists are already being trained to become
‘patient navigators’, to signpost patients to the
most appropriate care options, such as open access
support to children or young people with mental
health worries, benefits advice, or direct access
physiotherapy.
I ask the obvious question: "is this a cost-cutting
measure in disguise?" Dr Heath, who speaks of the
project with great commitment, is quick to dismiss
such a thought. "Not at all. In fact the overall cost
to the NHS for the surgery will be slightly higher
than the current facilities – which are no longer fit
for purpose – are costing."
"The three current practices are stretched beyond
capacity, and the population of the town is growing,”
he concludes. “We are planning something
which is quite pioneering: I believe we will be the
envy, for example, of anyone living in Brighton. A
similar project at Bromley-By-Bow has been very
successful, creating a space where people come for
much more than just to see their doctor, and we
are hoping to create something of real value to the
Lewes community."
Alex Leith
Courtesy of Axis Architects
S
H
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