Out of Area (OOA) Policy
The Surgery receives many requests from patients either to remain with the Surgery when they move away, or for patients living some distance away to join this Practice. While we would like to please everyone and agree to these requests, we are restricted by the number of GPs and other staff physically working here. In addition patients living further away subsequently requesting home visits put these limited resources under strain.
For these reasons we will normally ask patients living off, or moving off Portsea Island to find another GP more local to their homes. We will provide assistance in locating a new GP as far as we are able, but please do not ask us to recommend another GP as this is an unfair request on us (indeed we could not and would not suggest one GP is "better" than another).
Patients in this position can also approach the Practitioner & Patient Services Agency (their Hampshire office is based in Winchester, with other around the country) or NHS Direct for advice. Telephone numbers and websites for these services are listed under contacts, or ask a member of staff who will be happy to provide these details.
We regularly receive correspondence returned advising us that a patient has "gone away" or similar. In these circumstances and where we hold no alternative address we are obliged to write to the address on our records seeking a response within 28 days. If we do not receive confirmation that the patient still resides at the address on our records, we will initiate their removal from our list of patients (please click on this link for more information about this process). We also see post from others (e.g. Hospitals or third parties) implying that the patient lives at a different address. Where this new address is still within our normal area we will write to the old address seeking confirmation; when the new address is not within Portsea Island we will write as above. Many Hospitals operate similar systems and it is possible that notification of a different address or returned correspondence to them will result in your being removed from our Patient List without notification to ourselves.