Health Matters Column: Health Campaign Group asks for clarification of clinic expansion benefits

The Leighton Linslade Health Provision Group wishes to thank those members of the ICB that have taken the time over the past 10 months to meet with us, answer our questions and supply information for our numerous FOI requests.

The recent opening of the additional rooms at the Leighton Buzzard attended by Robin Porter the new head of the ICB, Wes Streeting the Minister for Health and our local MP Alex Mayer was a positive response to some of the concerns expressed by our group on behalf of the Leighton Buzzard residents surveyed in May 2023 and our petition in September 2024.

However, in consideration of:

The projected 25% population growth, our ageing demographic.

The merging of the BLMK ICB with three others to make one of the largest ICB’s in England’s and our own experience of the BLMK ICB’s inability to accurately tell us where all the patients have to travel for what type of appointments , the extremely low take up of Pharmacy First and no measurement by the ICB of E-Consult to assess where it is working well and for who it is just creating an additional barrier to access?

You have a goal to ” embrace measurement and a culture of continuous improvement.”

So the concern for a large town that whilst having excellent GP Practices that provides 296,000 appointments ,patients still have to travel to over 111,000 Outpatient appointments across the wider BLMK and the additional 56,000 appointments promised to ourselves and our MP in the meeting on the 3rd June would on paper seem to effectively double the capacity of the Clinic based upon your own 2023/24 figures but when broken down

Outpatient Appointments 2,472

Community Contacts 30,536

Mental Health Contacts 22,954

We are unclear at present what those additions really mean and how much benefit we will see in the future?

How can we be assured that Central Government investment is used effectively and communities within Central Bedfordshire who have been in Health Infrastructure planning limbo since January 2023 see a transparency to future decision making?