The Improving Health Limited (IHL) Extended Primary Care Service (EPCS), provides extra Doctor and Advanced Nurse Practitioner (ANP) appointments.
This service is delivered from either the Tessa Jowell Center in East Dulwich or the Lister Primary Care Centre in Peckham.
The EPCS is open 08:00 – 20:00, 7 days a week but it is NOT a walk in centre.
You may be offered an appointment at this EPCS when there are none available at our Practice. It is strongly advised that you take up the offer of the appointment at this EPCS as this will be the quickest or earliest chance for you to see a Doctor or ANP.
Doctors and nurses at the EPCS can access a patient’s full medical records (with the patient’s consent) to be able to offer the right care and treatment.
IHL also has a number of slots where they will ring you back to discuss your matters (similarly like our Doctors do here) and again if deemed appropriate they will offer you an appointment direct and ask you to come and see them that day/early the next day.
Background
The IHL has been running for several years and was set up as part of the Prime Minister's Challenge Fund, a challenge to GP Practices across the country, to open up more access and appointments to patients. Southwark CCG took this up as one of the first CCGs in the UK to do so and worked with all the Southwark Practices to form 2 distinctive GP Federations, QHS in the North and IHL in the South. Soon after forming the federation, the EPCS (Extended Primary Care Service) was commissioned and it has evolved now into a multi faceted organisation capable of seeing large numbers of patients on the day Monday - Friday and others as directed by GP Practices at the weekend. The organisation is led by a senior General Manager supported by GP and senior Healthcare Directors from South Southwark practices, but the main core of work is delivered by Southwark GPs and Nurses.
The Government backed this up with £2M of funding in the first year and it is funded each year by the CCG to maintain its running costs etc.
This is a very valuable and worthy Primary Care GP service administered by the South Southwark GP Federation and comprises 19 Practices in South Southwark are working with to ensure as much patient access as possible.