Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
HEALTH<br />
<strong>Lewes</strong> 'Super-surgery'<br />
A riverside health campus by 2020<br />
By the early 2020s,<br />
all going to plan,<br />
<strong>Lewes</strong> will have a<br />
new ‘Super-surgery’,<br />
which promises to<br />
offer more wideranging<br />
services and<br />
improved efficiencies,<br />
and will replace the<br />
three existing surgeries,<br />
whilst Ringmer<br />
surgery remains.<br />
I'm invited to St<br />
Andrew's Surgery to talk to Dr Jason Heath, a<br />
partner and GP there, who is one of the movers<br />
behind the new plans. St Andrew's is one of the<br />
three practices involved in what is much more<br />
than just a merger, along with School Hill Medical<br />
Practice and River Lodge Surgery.<br />
The site proposed is directly opposite the river<br />
from Tesco, where a number of warehouses from<br />
the old Phoenix industrial site currently stand,<br />
awaiting demolition before the Santon and <strong>Lewes</strong><br />
District Council development – of which this will<br />
be part – is constructed. The plan includes underground<br />
parking. The practice itself along with<br />
other new buildings will be built from first-floor<br />
height up, making it safe from flooding. The surrounding<br />
transport infrastructure will be improved<br />
to ease access to and from the site for both car and<br />
public transport users.<br />
More than just a merger? "We hope this will be a<br />
state-of-the-art centre," says Dr Heath, "providing<br />
a much wider access to health and social care<br />
than the existing surgeries can. It’ll offer a broad<br />
spectrum of services to cater for both physical and<br />
mental health problems, and enable other key services<br />
such as district nursing, midwifery, counselling,<br />
audiology, physiotherapy etc to be located on<br />
the same campus. Being in one place will improve<br />
delivery of care and<br />
serve what is a growing<br />
population into<br />
the next generation."<br />
The 'hub' is also keen<br />
to maintain links with<br />
the Victoria Hospital,<br />
with plans to open<br />
a GP-staffed urgent<br />
treatment unit.<br />
One reason for the<br />
modernisation is to<br />
alleviate what Dr<br />
Heath calls the 'GP bottleneck' whereby patients<br />
see the GP first, even if there is someone else<br />
better placed to help them: to this end <strong>Lewes</strong><br />
receptionists are already being trained to become<br />
‘patient navigators’, to signpost patients to the<br />
most appropriate care options, such as open access<br />
support to children or young people with mental<br />
health worries, benefits advice, or direct access<br />
physiotherapy.<br />
I ask the obvious question: "is this a cost-cutting<br />
measure in disguise?" Dr Heath, who speaks of the<br />
project with great commitment, is quick to dismiss<br />
such a thought. "Not at all. In fact the overall cost<br />
to the NHS for the surgery will be slightly higher<br />
than the current facilities – which are no longer fit<br />
for purpose – are costing."<br />
"The three current practices are stretched beyond<br />
capacity, and the population of the town is growing,”<br />
he concludes. “We are planning something<br />
which is quite pioneering: I believe we will be the<br />
envy, for example, of anyone living in Brighton. A<br />
similar project at Bromley-By-Bow has been very<br />
successful, creating a space where people come for<br />
much more than just to see their doctor, and we<br />
are hoping to create something of real value to the<br />
<strong>Lewes</strong> community."<br />
Alex Leith<br />
Courtesy of Axis Architects<br />
S<br />
H<br />
91