The big news issue:
In this issue we have many big changes to announce. The biggest change for the Surgery is Dr Parker’s retirement. She has put together a short statement for her patients and a longer reflection of how medicine has changed over her career, and the big changes that are around the corner, at the end of the newsletter. We also have other staffing changes to announce. There is much news on the public health front which you need to be aware of, and preventative healthcare ideas you may find helpful. We also have updates on our technology initiatives. There is a Survey at the end of the newsletter about your preference for future newsletter updates.
Surgery News:
Warm Welcomes and Fond farewells:
Dr Parker is officially retiring from partnership on the 31 March 2026. She is planning to spend more time with her Skis. We have a number of young and enthusiastic Doctors that are helping out, and Dr Parker has promised to come back for a period, in a part time capacity to ease the transition, when the snow melts.
Message for my Patients:
It has been a pleasure and a privilege to have been a GP Partner in the Hastings area since 1997. Many of you have been with me through various practice reformulations in the decades since this time and I am honoured that I have been able to see you through nearly three decades of medical tribulations or simply see you growing up to have your own families. It is going to be a big wrench for me, but hopefully we have a great team in place to carry on after me, we have been succession planning for a long time now. Good Health is the most precious commodity we have, and I wish for everyone, the very best of Health for the Future.
Dr Linda Parker.
We have other retirements to announce, Mrs Jackie Horton, who retired as Practice Manager last year, but has been helping out part time with complaints and reports, is fully retiring in March and Mrs Janine Fermor, one of our experienced ANPs, will be retiring from full time practice in April. We wish them well.
You will have noticed big changes in the reception team over the past few months, we have been actively expanding this team in the anticipation of taking phone calls back in house from May, when Lois and her team in Manchester will be leaving us. Tom, Jack, Nadege, Laura, Andrew, Sian, Fabin, Casey and Lisa, will be your first port of call for the in-person telephone reception desk and front of house. They will be helping Amy, Leo, Kirsty and Lydia in the Call Allocation Team who find you appointments and sort out your online and call queries.
Please check out the Technology review section, we have some great news on upgrading automated telephone system etc,
Public health news:
Meningococcal Meningitis B:
You will have read in the news about the very sad deaths of young people at Canterbury University in the Meningococcal B Meningitis outbreak. An urgent immunisation campaign for at risk individuals is underway. This is a strain of the disease, that usually affects small children, and immunisation is part of the primary immunisation programme for babies. PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU COMPLETE YOUR CHILD’S IMMUNISATION SCHEDULE. Although there are antibiotics that can treat this disease, the onset of the illness is often too swift and too severe to have a good outcome. If you suspect your child has meningitis, phone 999. Do not wait. If your child develops a rash that does not blanche with a glass, phone 999, but be warned the rash in the early stages is slightly different and can blanche, please look at the other symptoms below.
https://ukhsa.blog.gov.uk/2026/03/18/meningitis-b-outbreak-what-you-need-to-know/
RCV Vaccination:
In better news, the RSV vaccination campaign continues, this is a one off vaccination that you can have at any time of year if you are pregnant or if you are aged 75-79. This disease causes a severe bronchiolitis and respiratory distress for babies and the elderly. It is viral, so there is no drug treatment for this if infected.
https://www.nhs.uk/vaccinations/rsv-vaccine/
Pneumococcal Vaccination upgrade:
Pneumococcal vaccination programme has been upgraded for infants from 13 strains to 20 strains as part of their primary vaccination programme, infants under 2 may be eligible for boosters if they have had the PCV13 formulation. Immunocompromised patients over 2 and those aged over 65 will be offered PCV20 when available. Pneumococcal vaccine not only protects against the strains of bacteria that cause pneumonia, it protects against a particularly aggressive and damaging bacterial meningitis (similar to the meningococcal meningitis), mortality rates for this meningitis are up to a quarter of those infected, often within hours, and brain damage for survivors is at least 50%. If you are eligible for this vaccine, please accept it.
https://www.nhs.uk/vaccinations/pneumococcal-vaccine/
Varicella Vaccine:
Varicella is a herpes virus that causes primary chicken pox in children and a late reactivation of the infection as shingles in adults. Although the virus in children is usually mild, small babies and pregnant women and the immunocompromised can get very ill. Varicella is now included with the MMR vaccine.
https://www.nhs.uk/vaccinations/chickenpox-vaccine/
This vaccine is similar to the shingles vaccine offered to the older patients, this was the 70-79 year olds but the age eligibility is being reduced to 60 in stages over a 5 year period, and for those who are immunocompromised from 18.
https://www.nhs.uk/vaccinations/shingles-vaccine/
The really exciting news is that the shingles vaccine has been shown to reduce the risk of dementia by 20% (relative risk reduction). Although the initial epidemiological data was on the old Zostavax, the newer Shingrix still seems to be effective against dementia and is twice as effective in preventing shingles.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08800-x
For those approaching retirement, apart from vaccinations we suggest you look at some preventative lifestyle habits to keep you healthy. You don’t need to get a gym membership or take on extreme diets, we suggest you have a look at the Professor Lieberman Evolution lectures (the arm gestures are a bit distracting but bite size topics are very easy to follow). Based on his career at Harvard, on evolutionary biology and staying healthy and active into older age, as our ancestors did, no trainers required.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KaxSTHcN5A improve heart health with walking
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWoggoVJdaY reduce dementia risk with 3 diet adjustments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqLbeTJ3MaA 3 habits to help keep you young
Sussex ICB (soon to be Sussex and Surrey ICB)
The Sussex Integrated Care Board has an update on cancer screening, emergency Dentistry and some additions to the Bexhill stroke rehab service. The Sussex and Surrey ICBs will be merging from 1 April 2026 with the aim of reducing costs/ staffing by 50%, so we are unsure if they are still going to be able to compile their updates. Please follow the link, it will take you to the current page where you can access all the weekly bulletins.
https://www.sussex.ics.nhs.uk/nhs-sussex-news-27-february-2026/
Technology News:
“Phone Bot”, the telephone Robot
Phone bot” the basic automated phone system we installed last year is being replaced with a dramatically improved AI phone system shortly that does not require registration, pin numbers etc. They actually sounds human, and will put a coherent note of your problem straight into the triage software in exactly the same way, as if you did it yourself on line. The 2 leading contenders we are testing are “Rachel” and “Ami”, we will be going live as soon as we have made a final decision. We are looking to integrate all of the front door access into the AccuRx online triage system, it is slightly unfair to call this a Triage Bot, as it is our Call allocation team of humans that manage this
“Note Bot”, the AI Robot Note taking secretary
Note Bot, has been a game changer and we continue to use these to free up time to speak to patients rather than type, however, we are monitoring the systems for the amount of corrections that are required on proof reading the notes at the end of the consultation.
Lab Bot, the laboratory result robot
Lab bot continues to beaver away filing normal results, and highlighting cholesterol results that may need an intensification of medication. We are currently looking at integrating this function into our other results and recall management system tools, so your message notifications may look slightly different in the future.
“Check Bot”, the ‘Medlink’ Medical Check-up online review
Many of you have completed this year’s online review for heart disease, diabetes or COPD through the Medlink form. This has allowed us to collect and correlate essential pre check information to organise a face to face follow up appointment, or if all of the checks and examinations are normal, to conclude the review without you needing to re-attend. We have been very pleased with this system and will be keeping this for the coming year.
Parking at The Hill Surgery
We want to make parking fair and accessible for all patients. Please read the important information below about using the car park and what to do if you receive a Parking Charge Notice (PCN).
Free patient parking
Parking at the Ore Clinic is free for patients attending the surgery only. To use this:
You must enter your vehicle registration number into the parking pod in the waiting room when you arrive.
If you are unsure how to use the system, please speak to reception, we are happy to help
Important: If your registration is not entered, you may receive a parking fine.
Appealing a parking fine (PCN)
If you receive a PCN but were attending the surgery, you should appeal directly to the parking company.
The parking company has confirmed they will take a more understanding approach where appropriate. When reviewing appeals, they will accept:
Appointment confirmations (text, email, or letter)
Evidence from consultation records confirming attendance (for example: “patient attended reception”)
Visits for administrative reasons such as:
Collecting prescriptions or sample pots
Booking appointments
Speaking with reception
Please note:
The surgery can no longer contact the parking company on behalf of patients who did not register their vehicle
Repeated failure to register your vehicle will result in further fines
The car park is strictly for patients only
We have received reports of misuse (e.g. parking for shopping, takeaways, or other non-medical visits), which reduces availability for those who need care.
Our staff do not use this car park so that spaces remain available for patients.
Our request to you
Please use the car park responsibly and remember to register your vehicle each time you visit. This helps ensure parking remains available for those who need it most.
Survey:
We are restarting the in person Patient Participation Group, that was replaced by the newsletter. PPGs have been an NHSE initiative for a decade, but many patients did not know anything about them or get news from them. They are a small, usually 6-10 patients who should be demographically representative of the patient population of the practice, that meet quarterly to discuss a patient view of practice initiatives, make suggestions, run surveys and provide feedback. They are not there to run the practice or provide a regulatory function, but they are supposed to give unbiased feed back to the practice and the registered patients as a whole and keep them informed about what is going on in the practice. We have had feedback from our November Issue from a number of patients who expressed an interest in being part of an in person PPG, we will be re-contacting people in the first instance to check for ongoing interest.
For our own information, we would like to know if you found the Patient Participation Newsletters informative? If you want to continue to receive an ongoing newsletter? How you want the PPG to communicate with you in the future? Please complete the survey.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/FJ2M75D
And finally, the last word to Dr Parker:
“It’s not like it used to be”
Yes. How things have changed. When I went to university in 1983, I chose the Cambridge course because it was advertised as the “scientific medical Course”. I was expecting to inhabit the Hallowed Halls of Nobel Prize winners, Rutherford, Watson and Crick, and Max Perutz, and bow down before the greats of the Cavendish Laboratory and the Medical Research Council. However, undergraduate college looked more like Hogwarts, with black gowned humanities fellows, flocking like fruit bats over the pre-dinner drinks. The Medieval Quads had plumbing and heating to match. Time ran according to Chapel and the serving of the Dining Hall, not the clock. You had to be vigilant for the whir of an electric wheelchair (the only modern thing there), lest a grinning Stephen Hawkin took out your ankles with it in the rush for Formal Hall dinner. Apart from the presence of a few women, it could have been 1883, or 1483 for that matter.
Everything was about to change. Public health, and General Surgery had had their seismic change in the hundred years earlier with public sanitation, vaccination, anaesthesia, sterilisation and streptomycin. Medicine, specifically biomedical science was about to explode into the future. Dr McCoy and Star Trek were about to become reality.
In 1986 when I went to clinical school, ground breaking science really started to hit home. We were looking at early diagnostic CT scans, MRIs were just coming in, and the tiny pictures seemed to be about an inch square, with many crushed onto an x-ray film. We still stalked the wards like flocks of snow geese in white coats, armed only with a stethoscope and pen torch for diagnosis, all of that was about to change. Labs had started to use electrophoresis to separate protein fragments for elucidating complex protein structures, (western blot) and this technology was being applied to DNA with the use of a single restriction enzyme to cut and then to separate a piece of DNA to try to separate a gene (southern blot).
A year later, I’m in the MRC building, being allowed to use the department’s new apple mac, a machine imported from California that was so special it has its own room. 3 Nobel Prize winners were standing round, trying to show me how to use it to write a proposal for funding to do the first gene mapping studies in New Zealand. This was to look at one gene that we suspected caused the anaemia seen in the Maori. With reagents so novel, I had to smuggle them into the country wrapped in swim wear in my hand luggage to avoid confiscation, it took weeks to mix up the back-up reagents from scratch, do the patient isolation and gene separation, I wrote 3 airmail letters home. Fast forward 40 years, school children throw Apple’s MacBook into their school bags with 1000x the computing power of the MRC original Apple Mac; spit into a tube and for £300 you can get your whole genome sequenced; my mobile phone has all the information in the world available, in a couple of finger taps, from anywhere in the world, the airmail letters have been replaced by WhatsApp videos or Instagram. Yes, things have changed. Beam me up Scotty.
General practice 30 years ago had computers with flashing green text, use was not universal, nothing was coded, and it could not be searched. We had not heard of the internet. We wrote on the same Lloyd George Cards in brown storage envelopes the namesake had instigated in 1911. In a power cut, I once handed a pile of these to a young doctor and the reply was “What is this? How do I use it?” I don’t think they got the irony of being handed a pen with a detailed explanation of how this could be used to put words onto the cards. Reception found it amusing.
Your computer notes are now all coded, we can search your notes individually and as a practice. MRHA drug warning – no problem – a few clicks and we know who is taking the medication. Outbreak of a disease that affects the vulnerable – 30 seconds we have a list of who needs vaccinating. Feed this into the messaging system and 2 minutes later you have an alert on your phone and a link to book into a clinic. Yes, things have changed.
When I started in General Practice, we had small lists, the GP did everything, knew everyone, their families and probably their pets. I miss the personal relationships, but times have changed. So much of what was previously managed in the hospital is taken care of in general practice, even by patients themselves taking home blood pressures, blood sugars etc. GP numbers are falling, the population is older and more numerous, and more complicated, we can do more, we now have the support of a large team of often specialist nurses, who once provided the hospital clinics, now operate from the surgery. We feel very lucky as a practice. Coded notes, AI, computer assistance has replaced personal knowledge that was often not written, productivity has tripled. It may not seem like it, but we are doing considerably more with less. Disease outcomes are improving. Early diagnosis relies on general practice. Access to imaging, blood tests, screening based on GP records and rapid referral pathways, means that lung cancers are now being found at the curable stage. 40 Years ago, in 1986, when I entered medical school the average life expectancy was 3 weeks. Yes, things have changed.
I look forward to the next chapter, to having more time for the study of some of the wonderful new medical advances that are landing daily, and some medical retirement projects for new services. I’m sure I will catch up with some of you in the future. There were times when the hours were brutal and the “Ask” seemed impossible, but I have worked with some truly remarkable people and I always looked forward to returning to work after a holiday to see my patients and staff. I don’t think I would change a thing. It has been a privilege. Thank you.
Dr Linda Parker.
