 | Protecting and Improving our local health service |
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Stephen McPartland is working hard to become the next Conservative Member of Parliament for Stevenage and one of his key priorities is to work with local people to safeguard local NHS services and make them even better.
Stephen is proud of the NHS and says “everyone I speak to really values the local NHS, but there are some real concerns about the future of our local health service. I believe those making the decisions about our health service should listen and understand the views of residents, so I launched a major NHS survey to do just that – listen to local people. Over 1000 households responded and I discussed the results with Nick Carver, Chief Executive of our local hospitals”.
The results were widespread and showed that local people were giving a thumbs up to the care they received from staff at the hospitals, but nearly 60% felt that overall services had not improved over the last few years. The survey uncovered evidence that local people had noticed the Lister was working harder to improve cleanliness and combat the fear of patients and their families have of hospital related infections with 80% agreeing that they were happy with the standard of cleanliness.
Stephen added “It was disappointing that over a third of people who responded were not registered with a dentist and were finding it difficult to do so”.
There also remained continuing anger at having to call their local GP in the morning to get an appointment that day, which many find difficult due to work commitments. There was widespread support for GP services to remain open longer into the early evening and weekends.
Stephen has also been running a campaign to improve local Cancer Services , as he believes they should be moved closer to people’s homes.
Stephen said ”the figures do not fully show some of the difficulties that local people have faced in accessing services at times. For example, one lady reported back that she had to go to Mount Vernon by public transport to get her treatment, which is just terrible. I believe it is important that we get a satellite radiography unit at the Lister to stop this being repeated”.
 
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