A THAME patients group is appealing to local people to think twice before driving their cars to visit the Health Centre in East Street, as parking there becomes more and more of a headache.
Mike Smith, a member of the Patients Committee at the Rycote doctors practice, told ThameNews.Net: “As you may be aware, there is a lot of building work going on at the Health Centre as forward thinking to accommodate 775 more houses expected to be built in the town over the next few years.
“That will mean 2,000 more people on top of 11,000 currently covered by the Rycote Practice and 4,000 by Trinity Health, which means a lot of cars!
“Parking has never been very good but is worse at the moment with contractors vehicles in, etc. Also, on a Tuesday it is used by all and sundry to visit the market with people not realizing it is a private car park.”
Here are some startling figures for the use of the Health Centre and its car park, and an explanation of how local people can help ease the parking situation on site:
Thame Health Centre provides healthcare to nearly 16,000 patients. 11,200 at the Rycote Practice and over 4,500 at Trinity Health.
On average there are 35 members of staff – doctors nurses and administrative staff ? who work at Rycote and Trinity practices on an average day. Approximately 300 patients will visit Thame Health Centre each day to see a doctor or nurse and the majority of people will drive to the surgery. The site is also used by the community hospital and the district nursing teams. “Add to this the number of people who drive to Boots to pick up their prescription and you can imagine how many people may need to park on site,” explained Mike.
“This number is compounded by people using this car park and walking into town to visit the shops or the market. This means that our patients, doctors and nurses can often find it difficult to get parked and it causes everyone a great deal of stress. Unfortunately we do not own the car park which makes taking steps to help control its use very difficult.
“In the short term, we are appealing for people to help us by;
* Not using this car park unless you are visiting the health centre or accessing community or hospital services on the site. There are other car parks in Thame for shoppers
*Not bringing your car if you are fit and healthy enough to walk to the surgery. This means that more patients who absolutely must drive are able to get parked
*Only parking in designated spaces ? people sometimes park on the verges making it difficult to access the car park safely and sometimes blocking people in
“We are also trying to ease the pressures by encouraging our staff to avoid bringing their car to work wherever this is possible and by parking off site when they can,” added Mike.
In the longer term, the Group is talking to the owners of the car park about increasing the number of spaces and are looking at the possibility of purchasing some of the car park so that they can protect some of the spaces for use by patients.
“In the meantime,” pleaded Mike, we would ask for your readers’ help to ensure that this problem does not drive us all mad!”
SOURCE: The Rycote Practice & Trinity Patient Group
Trinity Health & Trinity Patient Group
Working in Partnership
PHOTO: Temporary waiting room accommodation at the Rycote Practice as major alterations and expansion work is carried out at the Health Centre