Boxford Surgery Closure Proposal

The practice has made the application to close our Boxford branch surgery.  

The final decision is not up to us ultimately, the decision is made by the NHS Suffolk and North East Essex Integrated Care Board (ICB) and Primary Care Commissioning Group which will look at all of the evidence from the patient engagement. 

Some of the online pharmacies allow patients to telephone to order their repeat. You can also post us your repeat slip.  

The NHS has a list of online pharmacies here.

No, the number of appointments at Hadleigh will be increasing to compensate for what is being lost in Boxford. There will not be a reduction in appointments overall.  

There is no change to the way appointments are booked.  

Patients can also use eConsult to consult with us.

This is the case for 45% of our patients who live in villages around Hadleigh. Options include asking a friend or relative to give you a lift, travelling on the bus or taking a taxi. There is also a voluntary car service.  You can ask for a telephone consultation or eConsult.  We also know that Boxford patients are already having appointments in our Hadleigh surgery and some patients living in Boxford are not registered at our Practice.

We are only able to offer home visits to patients who are housebound due to their health conditions. This number is not expected to change. 

Boxford dispensary has limited opening hours, closing by 4.30pm every day. The dispensary in Hadleigh is open until 6.30pm every weekday, and prescriptions can also be sent to any other pharmacy. We are in the final stages of procuring an out-of-hours medication vending machine which, once up and running, will allow patients to collect medication 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

Patients can choose to nominate any pharmacy they wish and this can include one nearer to where you work.

The building is not equipped for patients in wheelchairs, the building has extensive issues with the drains, which are permanently blocked and staff working with sewage smell at times.  Whilst we have funded on-going maintenance costs, the building still needs further work including rewiring, new windows, new electric heating, improved infection control facilities and a complete uplift internally but this will only address some of the issues and not the larger issues with the building layout which makes it unsuitable for some of our patients with a disability.  

We also view the investment in this building not a cost effective use of our NHS budget when we are running only a part service for our patients.  We have also considered the on-going running costs of this building which could fund additional clinical sessions.  

Unfortunately not, to improve the building to make it better for disabled patients and safer it would require losing clinical space, therefore reduce consulting rooms and this still would not improve the fire access issue. 

Additionally there would still be on-going running costs to keep the branch open.  We consider this not a good use of our budget when we have better facilities and more services at Hadleigh, the aim is to consolidate our service from one site available for all our 16100 patients. We also know that the Boxford appointments, as many as 50% of them are being booked by non-Boxford patients, even from patients living in Hadleigh.   

Our data does not support this, we have 1466 patients who live in the Boxford village, this includes patients who have a Boxford postcode but still not walking distance to the surgery, out of this group we have 212 over 76 (01/09/24).

Age / Patient Number:

• Under 18 / 126
• 18-65 / 955
• 66-75 / 173
• 76 and over / 212

We have considered this in our decision to apply.  We are looking at ways to help with this, for example the medicine machine, appointment times and reducing unnecessary face to face appointments when a telephone call works equally as well, an example of this is some basic medication reviews.   

Unlike Boxford, the Hadleigh surgery building is not owned but privately leased.  All recent work was funded by the landlord as part of our lease renewal. None of our NHS budget was spent on this work.

Potentially yes, we are in discussion with the landlord about additional space, any increase would need to be approved by the ICB.

We are working on this, we understand these appointments are often taken as soon as they are released. We are looking at the distribution of these and how we can approve this.  

It is important to understand that there will be the same number of appointment overall if Boxford does close.  

The Care Navigation team at Hadleigh do not triage but signpost and to do this they need to ascertain the reason for the call. Since covid we have seen a rise of 30% uptake in demand for appointments and it is now more important for us to understand the reason for the appointment.  

We are still seeing a large number of patients who do not attend on a daily basis.

There are four public car parks in Hadleigh all relatively close to the surgery. The surgery does also have its own car park.  

The difficulties with parking and charging is faced by all our patients including those who live in Hadleigh but are too frail to walk.  

The additional patients in the waiting room equates to approximately one every ten minutes. Patients can take responsibility to reduce this risk, for example ensure good hand hygiene and if concerned wear a mask.  

We have considered this, we already know that during a morning surgery at Boxford, many patients are travelling from Hadleigh, this would reduce and so we consider this an important factor when looking at the enverimontal issues.