I have been engaging with Modality this week and will be meeting them very shortly face to face to discuss the situation and the fixes, hopefully coordinated with Jeremy Quin MP who covers Crawley Down.
I do greatly thank them for the prompt engagement as we in our casework team reached beyond exasperation point and that had to to be addressed and in my view properly understood. As we now will be able to work to navigate better together getting the outcomes for my constituents, their patients the help and GP support they need.
Meanwhile I greatly stress again that we must all be very mindful of those on the frontline doing their roles and I reiterate that those on the frontline answering calls are doing their personal best and we must all be courteous in our approaches. As I have said before we all get frustrated and my team and I have frontline roles and we are appreciative of all politeness in those with any dissatisfaction on this or any other matter and in times of great frustration and any anger - any abuse at those doing their jobs will not be tolerated and we all are wholeheartedly appreciative of people being kind and using the complaints and escalation procedures suitably or sharing with me the situation so we can support you to raise it appropriately.
THE LATEST
I met on Tuesday with the Lead on this matter, the Chief Primary Care Lead with NHS Sussex who are the Integrated Care Board and with their Director of communication and engagement. In this meeting we took the opportunity again to push for support for more NHS dentists to be available in Mid Sussex. I will update further on this and be assured this too is absolutely not an acceptable situation and a major public health concern I have on my constituents behalf. They are continuing to work on this and I will continuing to escalate this matter too. I will update further when I have more.
Here below is the statement from NHS Sussex, after our meeting where I was very robust and forthright on behalf of constituents reiterating it was my real belief that there was a lack of understanding of the size of the concerns and that all parties had to get a grip on this. They were meeting Modality this week, after my meeting where my casework team and I spelt out the concerns. I do thank individuals over the months and the patient group voices who have come forward to share further experiences which we have passed on.
This is their update:
“We are actively working with Modality Mid Sussex and the Care Quality Commission to understand the issues that have been raised by patients.
We are meeting with the GP practices, analysing patient feedback and engaging with local stakeholders and partners to identify where action may be needed.
“We know that there is high demand for all GP practices at the current time and the teams are working hard to provide care for their patients; we are working with them to ensure appointments are available and people can access their practice.
“We have met with Mims and talked about the feedback she has received from local residents and will continue to work together to ensure we are addressing the areas raised by patients.
“Further improving access to high quality primary care is one of our key priorities, and we are committed to supporting people in Crawley, Burgess Hill, and East Grinstead to be able to receive the care they need as quickly as possible.
“Work is taking place with the GP practices and their teams over the coming days and weeks to move this forward, and we will provide regular updates as soon as possible.”
I will of course keep my constituents updated but be assured Jeremy Quin and I are robustly together focussed on assuring all those concerned that we are very determined in assisting in the resolving the issues of dissatisfaction for our constituents.
We all recognise this matter of deep concern and are standing up for constituents which is our primary function.