You Said, We Listened, We Did

Dispensary Project

As a rural practice we dispense to a large number of our patients – in fact we are one of the busiest dispensaries in the whole country.

Historically Ancaster Surgery has held our main dispensary responsible for all Ancaster prescription items and also repeat prescriptions for Caythorpe patients. Caythorpe Surgery had a smaller branch dispensary for acute prescription items only.

Unfortunately despite our dispensary staff  working their socks off (and with our trusty dispensary robot becoming ever more un-trustworthy!) a number of our patients were becoming unhappy with the waiting times for repeat prescription items. This led to us having a complete re-think and overhaul of the dispensary system across both sites.

After months of building work and hours of hard work outside of normal practice opening by our dispensary team to get things up and running we now have 2 brand new, fully independent dispensaries – one at each surgery. This means that we can provide a better level of service to our patients and also have a much nicer working environment for our dispensary staff to do their invaluable job from. Repeat medications are now dispensed within 72 hours , and often quicker than this.

We’ve had excellent feedback from patients and staff alike about the new dispensaries – well done dispensary team!

Ancaster Dispensary

Caythorpe Dispensary

Before:

Home Blood Pressure Monitoring Project

Our Medical Equipment Trust very kindly provided a supply of home blood pressure monitors for our patients to use a number of years ago. Unfortunately despite a large number of monitors our waiting list for these was growing whilst at the same time our machines were aging. The time taken to process and clean these monitors between each “loan” wasn’t helping with this.

We therefore decided to overhaul our home blood pressure monitoring system – encouraging patients to purchase their own monitors wherever possible. We developed a practice information leaflet and also website page on how to buy a blood pressure monitor and do home readings. We also embraced the use of AI in processing the information gathered by patients who are unable to average their own results.

We are now getting home blood pressure readings back much quicker than previously which means that we can ensure that every patient’s care is optimised.

We still have measures in place for patients who are unable to purchase their own monitor or do their own monitoring to ensure that patients are not disadvantaged by this.