There was an extraordinarily high response rate to this engagement exercise with patients universally making the case for a service to be retained in the village of Coniston. More than a third of the practice population gave their opinion to the ICB survey and/or face-to-face engagement sessions.
Feedback has strongly suggested that losing a service in the village itself would be a significant blow to the population of Coniston. Notwithstanding the additional travel time to surgeries that are further afield – and with limited public transport options available – the loss of access to prescription medications within the village would cause significant inconvenience to those living nearby.
As a tourist hotspot, the village population grows significantly each year, and patients explained the current surgery also provides excellent healthcare services to those temporarily residing in the village either for leisure or seasonal employment and the loss of this local service would cause major difficulties in this regard.
There are also concerns about the standard of care that would be received at surgeries outside of Coniston in comparison to that currently experienced. Additionally there is a strong perception that practices are not currently accepting patients or are at least close to capacity.