For many years I’ve been campaigning alongside local residents to expand and improve the range of NHS services available at Purley War Memorial Hospital.
We’ve had a number of successes, such as increasing the GP Hub opening hours to 365 days a year, 12 hours a day (8am to 8pm). This is very useful to ensure local people can see a GP very quickly if their own is busy, or get a minor injury fixed without needing to go all the way to A&E in Croydon town centre.
Today I’m pleased to share an update that my campaigning has led to a further expansion, with new Community Diagnostic Centre (CDC) and minor elective surgery facilities opening earlier this year. Since their launch in January, Croydon NHS has been able to provide 5,321 extra medical tests for Croydon patients, taking them up 38,200 procedures and tests in total.
This now means there is a substantially expanded range of services available to local residents at Purley Hospital. I filmed a short update of these with the Director of Purley Hospital in the video below:
I am delighted to report that the services now available at Purley Hospital include:
Purley Community Diagnostic Centre:
- Respiratory Pathways: Suspected Asthma, Suspected COPD, Suspected Sleep Apnoea and SOB of unknown cause (cardiac cause excluded)
- Echocardiogram
- Ambulatory Ecocardiogram
- Ambulatory Blood pressure
- DEXA
- Fluroscopy
- Ultra sound scan- non obstetric
- CT- colon, CT with and without contrast
- X-ray
- Unscheduled bleeding on HRT pathway
- Phlebotomy
GP Hub:
- 365 days a year, 8am to 8pm.
- If you, or your family, have an urgent need to see a GP the NHS advises people to call NHS 111 for an assessment with trained health advisors to book an urgent appointment at a GP Hub. The hub also offer walk-in services, but the NHS is encouraging people to ‘phone before you go’ to make sure you access the most appropriate service for your needs.
- The GP Hub treats urgent minor injuries and urgent minor illnesses. See below for the full list. There are some things they can’t treat, see the list at the end of this post for exceptions.
Urgent minor injuries
- Lacerations capable of closure by simple techniques (stripping, gluing and suturing) but excluding injuries involving broken glass in which x-ray may be required to identify any broken glass
- Bruises
- Foreign bodies, e.g. children sticking beads, etc. in noses or ears (in which case a quick assessment needs to be made to determine whether these can be removed or whether the child needs to be referred to ENT), splinter/other foreign bodies stuck in wounds which could then be removed with tweezers
- Non-penetrating superficial foreign bodies in the eye
- Following recent injury of a severity not amenable to simple domestic first aid
- Following recent injury where it is suspected stiches may be required
- Following blows to the head where there has been no loss of consciousness or vomiting
- Recent eye injury where there is no loss of vision, chemical or blunt injury
- Partial thickness thermal burns or scalds involving broken skin: size according to clinical discretion (minor burns) not involving the hands, feet, face, neck, genital areas
- Foreign bodies superficially embedded in tissues
- Minor trauma to hands, limbs or feet.
- Strains and sprains
Urgent minor illnesses
- Earache and sore throats
- Stomach pain and nausea
- Headaches and rashes
- Emergency contraception
- Urinary tract infections
- Incisions and drainage of minor skin abscesses e.g. infected cysts, paronychia, etc.
- Minor skin and tissue infections
- Bites and stings
- They will soon be able to support requests for a blood test from the GP Hub to the phlebotomy service at Purley.
Purley Minor Elective Surgery Centre:
- Minor elective surgery, those not requiring an overnight stay
- e.g. for women with unscheduled bleeding on HRT
- to help clear the backlog, minor day surgery offered to patients closer to home and with an aim of reducing the number of times needed to go to hospital
Speciality outpatient Clinics:
- Cardiology
- Colorectal
- Community Midwifery
- Diabetes and Endocrine
- Gynaecology
- Health visitors
- Podiatry
- Pediatric speech and language therapy
- Dermatology
- Orthopedics
- Moorfields Community Eye Clinic
- Breast screening
Our local NHS are continuously listening to feedback and analysing data concerning the health needs in our area, adapting their services to meet our needs, so as MP for Croydon South I will keep pressing for the improvements and services we all want to see.
Rt Hon Chris Philp MP
Member of Parliament for Croydon South
*Exclusions from the GP Hub:
To avoid any confusion, the below are not available at Purley Hospital GP Hub:
- Broken bones, serious trauma/injury or medical emergencies (e.g. stroke, heart attack) – Requires a visit to A&E or Urgent Care Centre at Croydon University Hospital (Mayday)
- Injuries where glass is in the wound – Requires a visit to A&E or St George’s Tooting
- Dental issues
- Referrals to secondary (i.e. hospital) care – requires seeing your own GP
- Test results – requires your own GP, the testing service, or the hospital that ordered the test
- Fit (i.e. sick) note – requires seeing your own GP
- Repeat prescriptions – requires seeing your own GP
- Chronic low-level issues – requires seeing your own GP
