50 signatures reached
To: The Rt Hon. Jeremy Hunt MP
Help Hastings General Practice
Get more funding and General Practioners to Hastings
Why is this important?
GP practice is in decline in Hastings. Appointments are already limited and waiting times long, and why is this? There simply aren't enough doctors. Deficit in training doctors, the unfair terms of junior doctor contracts and the unattractive proposition of a general practitioners workload in comparison to their salaries has meant that there is a shortage in GPs.
The lack of doctors and the state of health and healthcare services in a town as affected by poverty as Hastings, should be a priority. Today, checking local job listings, I found 12 positions for GPs in Hastings in just the first search page. Multiple practices in the area are short of doctors and are advertising to no avail, and a few of the remaining practices are currently offering "inadequate" services, not through incompetence but that there is not enough doctors to cover the workload. 5 Practices have been taken over by IMH, a private healthcare provider, these practices are also struggling to recruit doctors and provide care to standard for their approximately 20,000 patients.
We need to act now, as the worst end result of this is not privatization but that while conditions are worsening and there is a paucity of care thousands of patients with serious morbidities could deteriorate, unable to be seen. A&Es are not the answer for these people as they are already overloaded and waiting times in Hastings are particularly high. We need to make a stand and we need to do it now, we need to tell the Government that we do not accept these standards of care.
The lack of doctors and the state of health and healthcare services in a town as affected by poverty as Hastings, should be a priority. Today, checking local job listings, I found 12 positions for GPs in Hastings in just the first search page. Multiple practices in the area are short of doctors and are advertising to no avail, and a few of the remaining practices are currently offering "inadequate" services, not through incompetence but that there is not enough doctors to cover the workload. 5 Practices have been taken over by IMH, a private healthcare provider, these practices are also struggling to recruit doctors and provide care to standard for their approximately 20,000 patients.
We need to act now, as the worst end result of this is not privatization but that while conditions are worsening and there is a paucity of care thousands of patients with serious morbidities could deteriorate, unable to be seen. A&Es are not the answer for these people as they are already overloaded and waiting times in Hastings are particularly high. We need to make a stand and we need to do it now, we need to tell the Government that we do not accept these standards of care.
