\n As part of the council-run Health & Wellbeing Board, the director of Place for Swindon at the regional Bath, Swindon & Wiltshire Integrated Care Board, Gordon Muvuti was challenged by ward member for Wroughton & Wichelstowe, Councillor Gayle Cook.\n<\/p>\n
\n She said: \u201cIn Wichelstowe there are about 6,000 houses, and there\u2019s no GP surgery. It means there are 15,000 people registered with Wroughton Health Centre where there are eight doctors.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe guidance is that there should be about 1,000 patients per GP.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Cllr Cooke added later that she thought the doctors at the surgery were very good, but overstretched, and said there was land available for a medical centre, with plans approved.\n<\/p>\n
\n She told the meeting: \u201cWe just can’t get any information from the ICB. We don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Her colleague, Councillor Lawrence Elliott added: \u201cJust one ward over, in Old Town and East Wichel is also something of a desert. I think the whole of that southern part of the town is very poorly served.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Mr Muvuti said: \u201cPeople do need access to GPs, of course, but sometimes that\u2019s not the issue. Some access to primary care issues would not be solved by more GP surgeries.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe need to work with the council on the neighbourhood health plans to make sure people can access the services they need.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n The borough council\u2019s chief executive, Sam Mowbray, asked: \u201cWhat can we at the council do to try and get more movement, to speed this up?\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThere is a lot of feedback about the lack of primary care here.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n This was echoed by Amritpal Kaur of patients\u2019 advocacy group Healthwatch who said: \u201cThere is a significant risk in poor access to primary care, it can lead to things like late diagnosis.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Mr Muvuti said both the ICB and the council needed to work out what \u201cunanswered questions there are. And to work out whether that\u2019s for the ICB to answer of the council.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Heeding a warning from Cllr Elliott about not \u201ckicking the can down the road,\u201d Ms Mowbray and Mr Muvuti agreed to work together to try and\u00a0get clarity on what more information was needed, to try and resolve the issue and\u00a0address the needs for GP practices and primary care, especially in Wichelstowe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As part of the council-run Health & Wellbeing Board, the director of Place for Swindon at the regional…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-407175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}