A Blog from Amanda Gray, Managing Partner at Meon Health Practice
Welcome to the second Blog of 2025.
Planning for the year ahead
It was refreshing to receive a letter from the Government at the end of February with some high-level details of the new GP contractual changes for the year starting 1st April (we usually hear much closer to the end of March).
The letter gives us some indication of the funding we will receive from 1st April. Since there is already a mandated increase in costs for our practice, due to a higher national living wage and increased national insurance contributions, knowing our funding is news we have been anxiously waiting for. The value of our NHS contract directly affects how many staff we can employ to look after our patients.
Many of you will have seen headlines about the changes to GP funding and our new contract directly links to the government’s health objective:
- Hospital to community – bringing care closer to where people live, including through a new neighbourhood health service to deliver more proactive and personalised care.
- Analogue to digital – by rolling out new technologies and digital approaches to modernise the NHS.
- Sickness to prevention – shortening the amount of time people spend in ill-health by preventing illnesses before they happen.
So what do I think this will mean for our service for the year ahead?
First and foremost, I feel positive and confident about the change in the contract. It shows a commitment to move towards the things that we at Meon believe are the right priorities for improving patient outcomes, keeping people well and recognising the important part that GP practices play in the wider health system.
Secondly, I feel assured that at Meon we have built the right foundations to continue with modernising GP services and thereby ensuring that our practices remain viable and able to serve the community.
The key priorities for the next 12 months will be built around the following areas:
- Improving access through increasing usage and availability of our digital online system, Anima, which during January and February our patients submitted 7,597 requests. The government have asked that all practices have a digital online system available through the working day.
- Using our funding to ensure we have the right mix of staff both in terms of skills and experience so that our patients always see the most appropriate expert available. We have already built a great foundation of experts to support our GPs, so we are already able to offer personalised consultations with specialist nurses, pharmacists, physiotherapists, mental health practitioners, health coaches and social prescribers.
- Prevention of ill health comes in many forms, and we have a number of projects planned to increase vaccination and health screening uptake, to better manage patients heart health by focussing on blood pressure management and continue our focus on self-care through our social prescribing and health coaching teams.
As we know from our journey over the past 5 years, through the COVID pandemic and the 3-practice merger, communication is really important and therefore this remains as one of ongoing business priorities. We hope that you will have noticed some improvements in the quality and quantity of information we now regularly share. We have had some great feedback about our newsletter, we continue to improve our website and telephone communications, we continually review individual patient communications and are more active on social media platforms as well as introducing this Blog.
There are a few things that you, our patients could do to assist us to improve communication and keep yourself up to date with how the practice works and how to look after yourself:
- Use only approved sources of information on the Internet i.e.
- Our practice website Meon Health Practice which links to the NHS main website and other trusted websites for advice
- Our practice Facebook page Facebook
- Our practice LinkedIn page LinkedIn
Try to avoid taking medical advice from non-regulated services found on the Internet e.g. non UK medical providers and popular search engines.
Try to avoid using community social media groups to get answers for questions you have, e.g. Patients of Highlands, Jubilee and Whiteley Surgeries, Voice 4 Whiteley, and Fareham Matters who have no connection to the practice or information about the practice.
We are committed to ensure that our practice sources of information will always provide correct information and safe and reliable advice.
If you commit to working with us to use and promote only approved information sources.
We welcome your feedback.
Please email our Communications team at: hiowicb-hsi.comms-meonhealthpractice@nhs.net
Sign up to our patient newsletter here: In Touch with Meon Newsletter
If you would like to join our Patient Participation Group (PPG), please click on the link: